North Korea Requires Guarantee of Bilateral Talks for Six-party Participation

It is reported that the “trustworthy sincerity” that North Korea’s National Defense Committee Chairman Kim Jong Il proposed as a precondition for the country’s comeback to the six-party talks was the guarantee of bilateral talks with the U.S. on the sidelines of the six-way talks and an acceptable explanation of the U.S. calling the North an “outpost of tyranny.”

A high-ranking government official said on March 3, “North Korean leader Kim Jong Il mentioned such requirements in person in the meeting with Wang Jiarui, the head of the Chinese Communist Party’s international liaison department, who visited Pyongyang on February 21.”

The official said, “Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei who is visiting Korea confirmed the report,” adding, “The participants in the six-way nuclear talks see the requirements as hope to create an environment rather than a precondition of the talks.”

Vice Foreign Minister Wu met with Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Korea, in the morning of March 3 and said, “Pyongyang seems to consider its role in the six-party talks as one of a “defendant in a trial,” stressing the importance of the U.S. effort to create a comfortable environment for resuming the talks. Vice Foreign Minister Wu and Ambassador Hill are the chief negotiators of China and the U.S. respectively.

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young reportedly said in the meeting with Vice Foreign Minister Wu that day, “We regard that China’s effort made it possible to create a new atmosphere. Korea will also make a corresponding effort.”