U.S. Not Prepared to Offer Any Inducements to N.K.

The trilateral meeting to resolve the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program will be held in Beijing, China from April 23 to 25.

This meeting on Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions is the first in six months since the communist country acknowledged its nuclear program last October.

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs James Kelly will head the U.S. delegation. Deputy Director General Li Gun from the American Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will head the North Korean delegation. Fu Ying, director-general for Asian affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will head the Chinese delegation.

The North Korean delegation went directly to their hotel after arriving at Capital International Airport in Beijing using Koryo Airlines on Tuesday morning.

According to sources in Beijing, the three-way meeting will take place after bilateral talks between the U.S. and China and between North Korea and China are held.

The South Korean government decided to send Lee Jeong-kwan, a senior official with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade on Wednesday for policy coordination with the U.S. and China.

"We intend to conduct serious talks on the situation created by North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons," said spokesman Richard Boucher in a press briefing at the U.S. State Department, but "we are not prepared to offer any inducements to North Korea to try to achieve that."

"We believe that inclusion of others in multilateral talks-South Korea and Japan above all-would be essential for reaching agreement on substantive issues," he said.

The U.S. delegation is scheduled to visit Seoul and Tokyo before returning home in order to report the results of the trilateral talks.