[lbo-talk] U.S., North Korea to hold talks in N.Y. next week

[uvj at vsnl.com]

Reuters.com

U.S., North Korea to hold talks in N.Y. next week
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSWAT00705220070228

Wed Feb 28, 2007

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and North Korea will meet in New
York next Monday and Tuesday to discuss the normalization of relations, the
State Department said on Wednesday but played down expectations of any
breakthrough.

"I would caution you that this meeting is just a first step. It is an
initial conversation," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told
reporters.

"Don't look at it as a meeting that is going to produce immediate results.
Nobody is going to come out the front door and wave a piece of paper with
some agreement on it," he said.

Such talks are envisaged under the February 13 agreement in which North
Korea agreed to take steps toward nuclear disarmament in exchange for $300
million in aid and the prospect of other diplomatic and security benefits.
The agreement, reached four months after Pyongyang stunned the world with
its first nuclear test, requires the secretive communist state to shut down
the reactor at the heart of its nuclear ambitions and to allow international
inspections.

In a nod to other benefits that it might ultimately receive if it carries
through on abandoning its nuclear arms programs, the deal called for a
working group on the normalization of U.S.-North Korean relations to meet
within 30 days.

The United States and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations and the
two have a host of unresolved issues stemming from the 1950-1953 Korean War,
which ended with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty.

Other working groups are to be set up within 30 days on the denuclearization
of the Korean Peninsula, on the normalization of North Korea-Japan
relations, on economic and energy cooperation and on a "northeast Asia peace
and security mechanism."

McCormack said the United States would be represented at next week's talks
by Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and North Korea by its
nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan.

He said Kim was likely to arrive in San Francisco on Wednesday and would
have meetings with nongovernmental groups and others before traveling to New
York on Friday.

Despite the quickening efforts to implement the February 13 agreement, Hill
was expected to warn North Korea later on Wednesday that it remained subject
to U.N. sanctions.

In written testimony prepared for delivery to the U.S. Congress, Hill also
was expected to say that even though Washington is ready to resolve a
dispute over Pyongyang's accounts in a Macau bank, this will not end North
Korea's problems with the international financial system.

(Additional reporting by Carol Giacomo)

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