The former chief South Korean envoy to the stalled six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons programs said Friday he was less pessimistic than before about the prospects for next week's bilateral nuclear meeting between Pyongyang and Washington.
Wi Sung-lac, who was appointed the nation's ambassador to Russia last month after serving as its top delegate to the six-party talks for more than three years, said, however, that the multilateral forum is unlikely to restart any time soon.
South Korea and the U.S. have held preliminary discussions with North Korea since July on the terms for resuming the six-party talks, but no tangible progress was reported. The U.S. and North Korea are scheduled to hold a two-day meeting in Geneva from Monday, the second of its kind in nearly three months.
"Throughout the two rounds of inter-Korean denuclearization talks in July and September, I have expected that South and North Korea could reach a certain level of agreement," Wi told Yonhap News Agency in an interview.
"In that context, I think I am not so pessimistic about the second meeting between North Korea and the U.S.," Wi said.
North Korea abandoned the aid-for-disarmament talks in April 2009 and conducted its second nuclear test a month later. The talks group the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan.
Diplomatic jostling is under way as South Korea and the U.S. want North Korea to take concrete steps, including a monitored shutdown of all its nuclear activities, to prove the North's "seriousness of purpose" for the six-party talks.
Still, North Korea calls for a resumption of the multilateral forum with no preconditions attached.
In a rare interview with the Russian state news agency Itar-Tass on Thursday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il renewed his statements on his regime's readiness to return to the six-party talks "without any preconditions."
Although the six-party talks are at a standstill, Wi said the bilateral talks with North Korea should be widely seen as a return to the negotiations.
"While the six-party talks have not resumed yet, I think we have entered into a process of the negotiations," he said.
Asked whether a resumption of the six-nation talks is imminent, Wi replied, "I do not want to be so optimistic."
Many analysts agree that North Korea won't give up its nuclear weapons ambition because it is the regime's only negotiating leverage to the outside world.
But they also admitted that dialogue is the best option for curbing the North's aggressiveness.
Last year, North Korea torpedoed one of South Korea's warships and shelled a southern island near the tense Yellow Sea border, killing 50 South Koreans, mostly soldiers. South Korea's military has pledged tougher retaliation if the North repeats such an attack.
"North Korea leaves you only with bad and worse options. Avoiding dialogue only promises a runaway nuclear program and more provocations," said Victor Cha, a senior researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"If these lead to South Korean retaliation, then you have a full-blown crisis on the peninsula," Cha said. (Yonhap)