Possibility of Organizing Working Group in Six-Nation Talks

On February 27, the participating countries of the second round of six-nation talks postponed the closing ceremony of the talks and held a general meeting, chief delegation talks, and the deputies talks in succession to deliberate on the matter of adopting the joint statement.

In this conference, the United States repeatedly urged North Korea to own up to the fact that it possesses the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) program. However, North Korea has refused this request and asserted, “The U.S. has to abandon the enmities toward North Korea first,” bottling up the negotiation on the way to reaching the joint statement.

A source from the diplomatic circle of Beijing, in accordance with the contents which are scheduled to be incorporated in the statement, remarked, “As for the critical disputed points, we need to have more discussion. However, there is still a possibility for the participating countries to reach an agreement in order to organize a working-group which will continuously discuss the undecided factors of the talks and address the declarative principles such as the peaceful solution of the North Korea nuclear problem and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”

However, in terms of the U.S.’ offer of heavy oil supply to North Korea on the premise of nuclear freeze in North Korea, it has been known to have been excluded as the U.S. disclosed that, “The negotiation itself has no significance if the North Korea uranium nuclear problem is not solved.”

On the other hand, Colin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State in regards to the six-nation talks, remarked, “A promising attitude has appeared in the talks.”

The participating countries have consented to postpone the current date of the closing ceremony of February 27 until February 28. As the first round of the six-nation talks was held for three days last August, this round of talks is expected to conclude on February 27.

However, the participating countries have not mentioned the exact ending date. A government source disclosed that “there is a possibility of holding the closing ceremony just after the conference of February 28.”

Yoo-Seong Hwang Seung-Ryun Kim yshwang@donga.com srkim@donga.com