By Kim Young-jin
U.S. politician Bill Richardson said Tuesday in Beijing that the latest moves by North Korea including not responding to the South’s live-fire exercise open the door for multilateral talks with the isolated state
The New Mexico governor, who visited the North on a private mission to diffuse tensions, had already announced that the regime had agreed to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency back into its main nuclear facility, among other decisions, during their talks.
“They have shown, I believe, a step in the right direction,” Richardson told reporters during a stopover at the Beijing airport before flying home. “I think it is important that a new effort at reengagement takes place among the six-party countries.”
Richardson had been in Pyongyang when Seoul pressed forward with the artillery exercise on Yeonpyeong Island, the site of the North’s deadly Nov. 23 shelling. He said the North showed “certain pragmatism” by not retaliating as it had threatened it would.
Pyongyang also agreed to negotiate the sale and shipment of spent nuclear fuel rods to an outside country, namely the South, open a military hotline with Seoul and other measures during the talks.
His remarks came as regional players continue to consult over how to defuse tensions on the peninsula in the wake of the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, which killed four, and the North’s disclosure of a modern uranium enrichment program.
“My sense is the North Koreans realize that they have moved too negatively against negotiations, that they have taken some very bad steps and they wanted to move in the right direction,” Richardson said.
“I think it is important that a new effort at re-engagement takes place among the six-party countries. Maybe now is the time for the six-party countries to reach out to North Korea and say, ’Okay, let’s get down to business.’”
He echoed, however, recent remarks from Washington that the North should show positive actions toward denuclearization rather than simply make promises before the talks can resume.
Earlier, officials in Seoul and Washington indicated they would take measured responses to the North’s offer to allow the nuclear watchdog back into its main Yongbyon facility.
On Monday, U.S. State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley expressed skepticism.
“If North Korea wants to reengage with the IAEA, wants to reintroduce inspectors into its facilities, that certainly would be a positive step,” he told reporters on Monday in Washington.
“But the key is following through and implementing that decision, and meeting its international obligations both under international agreements and also with the 2005 joint statement” of the six-party denuclearization talks.
The talks, which also include Japan, Russia, and host China, stalled in 2009 when the North walked away in response to U.N. sanctions imposed for its missile and nuclear tests.
China and Russia, both parties to the forum, have called for a six-party meeting to address the tensions but Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have balked, saying the North must take verifiable denuclearization steps first.
Washington has laid out five conditions for the North to resume the talks: end its provocations, ease regional tensions, mend inter-Korean relations, fulfill the 2005 denuclearization pledge and comply with UNSC resolutions.
Some analysts say the North’s provocations and conciliatory gestures could be in line with its pattern of upping the ante before returning to talks.
Asenior Seoul official said Pyongyang could be up to an “old trick” in order to justify its uranium enrichment program, which it disclosed to an American scientist last month. He called on Pyongyang to rejoin the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the international regime it abandoned in 2003 over criticism of its nuclear program.
“If North Korea is serious about international inspection, it must first rejoin the NPT,” Yonhap News Agency quoted the unnamed official as saying. “And in order to return to the NPT, all nuclear programs must be frozen and withdrawn.”