A U.S. nuclear envoy was due in Seoul Friday to discuss strategies to deal with North Korea, as
Pyongyang showed new willingness to talk after sharply escalating tensions with an artillery attack on a South Korean island and revelations of a new nuclear facility.
Sung Kim, Washington's envoy for six-party nuclear talks on North Korea, was to fly in from Beijing where he accompanied Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg on a trip aimed at convincing China to use more of its influence over Pyongyang to stop the regime from making provocations.
Kim is scheduled to meet with South Korea's chief nuclear envoy Wi Sung-lac later Friday to brief him on the outcome of the high-level U.S. delegation's meetings with top Beijing officials, including State Councilor Dai Bingguo, who met with North Korean leader Kim Jong -il last week.
Since last month, North Korea has ramped up tensions with a deadly shelling of South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island and revelations that it has a facility to enrich uranium that gives the communist regime a second way of building nuclear weapons.
After a barrage of harsh rhetoric since the provocations, the North on Thursday expressed its willingness to resume dialogue, a move that fits Pyongyang's standard negotiating pattern of raising tensions with provocations before returning to the dialogue table with greater
negotiating power.
Pyongyang's foreign ministry said in the statement that it "supports all proposals for dialogue including the six-party talks prompted by the desire to prevent a war and realize denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula," though it said it "will never beg" for dialogue.
In response, the U.S. put forward preconditions that the North must meet before the talks reopen.
"There are things that we believe North Korea needs to do," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said, urging Pyongyang to cease provocations, reduce tensions, improve relations with South Korea, take steps to give up nuclear programs according to a 2005 disarmament pact and honor its obligations under U.N. Security
Council resolutions.
"North Korea knows what it needs to do," he said. "Action on those criteria would demonstrate to us a seriousness of purpose that might open the door to renewed dialogue. So there are a list of things that we want to see North Korea do."
China has proposed an emergency meeting of the talks' participants to discuss curbing tensions over the North's island attack, which killed four people, including two civilians, and the revelations of a uranium enrichment facility.
Dai, the top Chinese foreign policy official, told Steinberg in their meeting Thursday that the six-party talks are "the only effective way
to solve the peninsular issues and realize its peace and stability," according to Beijing's Xinhua news agency.
Dai also said that Beijing and Washington should work together to push for "the resumption of the negotiation process" as early as
possible, including dialogue between the two Koreas, according to Xinhua.
South Korea, the United States and Japan reacted negatively to the offer, saying the North should first take concrete steps demonstrating
its denuclearization commitment. The Chinese-hosted talks involve the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the U.S. and were last held in
December 2008.
South Korea views an agreement to restart the talks as a reward to Pyongyang, which has signaled its willingness to rejoin the forum in
recent months as its economic woes have deepened in the wake of international sanctions for its nuclear and missile tests last year.
Meanwhile, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson arrived in Pyongyang on Thursday on a trip that he said was aimed at seeing "if we can reduce the tension in the Korean Peninsula."
"I'm going to have a whole series of talks with North Korean officials, and I look forward to my discussions," Richardson was quoted as saying at the airport in Pyongyang.