The United States has decided to allow a senior North Korean official to attend a seminar in San Diego later this month amid talk of imminent bilateral negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea over the latter's nuclear ambitions, press reports said.
The U.S. government has decided to grant a visa to Ri Gun, director general of the North American affairs bureau of North Korea's Foreign Ministry, Reuters said, citing informed sources. Kim Myong-gil, deputy chief of the North Korean mission to the U.N. in New York, said Ri has been given a visa for the seminar, according to The Associated Press.
Ri, concurrently deputy to North Korea's chief nuclear envoy, Kim Kye-gwan, has been invited to a seminar in San Diego Oct. 26-27 by the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue, organized by the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California, San Diego, to bring together academics as well as government officials of the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, members of the six-way talks on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
Ri is expected to meet with U.S. officials on the sidelines of the seminar to prepare for possible bilateral talks between the two sides.
Last November, Ri visited New York to attend an academic seminar soon after the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president, and met with Sung Kim, special envoy for the six-party talks, and other U.S. officials and key policy advisers to Obama.
U.S. officials have said they have not yet made a decision on a possible visit to Pyongyang by Stephen Bosworth, special representative for North Korea policy, although they fell short of precluding bilateral talks with the North Koreans to woo them back to the six-party table.
Pyongyang extended an invitation to Bosworth when former U.S. President Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang in August to win the release of two American journalists and discuss North Korean nuclear and other issues.
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