Six-party Talks to Resume in Beijing on December 18

The year-long stalled six-party talks, since November last year, will reconvene in Beijing, China, on December 18 to deal with the North Korean nuclear program issues.

Qin Gang, the Chinese Foreign Affairs spokesman, briefly announced on December 11 on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry that “after multilateral discussion over the resumption process, the fifth round of the second six-party nuclear talks will start again on December 18 in Beijing.” However, he did not mention the detailed reason or timetable for this.

The six participant countries – the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan, and Russia –adopted the Chairman’s Statement in the fifth round of the first six-party talks held from November 9 through 11 last year to implement the September 19 Joint Statement based on the principle of “word for word” and “action for action.” However, as the financial sanctions led by the U.S. were imposed right after the adoption of the declaration in the denuclearization talks, the North lashed out against the U.S.-led financial measures which have led the talks into the deadlock until now.

Meanwhile, the upcoming six-party talks are attracting international attention on whether it will achieve substantial progress for denuclearization, given that the six-party talks are recommencing even though the North had test-launched nuclear missiles and the United Nations had adopted the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the North Korea’s nuclear test along with a resolution for sanctions against North Korea, intensifying the international pressure on the North.

The local press reported on the same day that the Japanese government had proposed establishing working groups within the framework of the six-party talks to discuss other issues such as the normalization of the Washington-Pyongyang and Tokyo-Pyongyang relationships, respectively.

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