Six-Party Envoy Visits Washington to Discuss 2nd Phase

Kim Sook, South Korea’s top negotiator for the six-party talks, left for the United States Sunday to meet with his counterparts from Washington and Tokyo.

Kim is scheduled to have bilateral and trilateral talks with chief negotiators Christopher Hill and Akitaka Saiki to discuss pending issues including the next round of six-party talks.

The meeting will likely be in regards to the issues to be dealt in the next six-party talks, including how to verify and monitor North Korea’s nuclear declaration as well as plans for the next step of nuclear dismantlement.

Kim said in a press briefing on Friday on the upcoming meeting in Washington, “We’ll be discussing declaration and verification, completion of the second phase and plans for the third phase of nuclear dismantlement.” He said the discussion is expected to include future obligations of the member countries based on the principle of “action for action.”

As the United States made a tentative conclusion that North Korea’s declaration data, including operation records of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor, is complete, it is expected to eliminate the North from the list of terrorism-sponsoring countries, while Pyongyang is expected to submit official declaration documents to China, the host country of the six-party talks.

South Korea, the United States and Japan reportedly intend to complete the reciprocal actions between Pyongyang and Washington by this month and resume the six-nation talks early next month.

The chief negotiators’ trilateral meeting is the first in 18 months, after the former meeting took place in Nov. 2006 in Hanoi, shortly after Pyongyang’s nuclear test in Oct. 2006.

Kim said last week in a meeting with Wu Dawei, China’s chief negotiator to the talks, “From this year, chief negotiators from Seoul, Washington and Tokyo will check and coordinate positions through mutual consultation.”

jin0619@donga.com