UN envoy meets with NKorea’s No. 2 official; SKorea, Japan press North to rejoin nuclear talks

UN envoy meets with NKorea’s No. 2 official

SEOUL, South Korea — The highest-ranking U.N. diplomat to visit North Korea in years met Thursday with its No. 2 official as part of an international push to get the communist government to rejoin nuclear disarmament talks.

U.N. political chief B. Lynn Pascoe sat down with Kim Yong Nam, broadcaster APTN reported from Pyongyang. As head of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, he is second in the chain of command after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Pascoe, making a four-day trip to the North Korean capital, verbally conveyed a message from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to Kim Jong Il, according to APTN. The message and a gift from the U.N. chief — a South Korean citizen — later were relayed to Kim himself, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency reported, without providing details.

As they met in Pyongyang, top nuclear negotiators from North Korea and China held talks Thursday in Beijing for a third day to discuss how to jump-start the six-nation talks aimed at ending the North’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid.

North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan was in Beijing at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei, and the two exchanged views on the six-party talks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said Thursday.

Kim told reporters at a Beijing hotel that he had “a deep exchange of views with (Wu) on issues of interest, including China-North Korea relations, signing of a peace treaty and resumption of the six-party talks.” He declined to give further details.

The rush of diplomacy raised hopes of a breakthrough on restarting the negotiations, which involve the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan. Kim Jong Il told a high-level envoy from Beijing on Monday that his government is committed a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

North Korea walked away from the negotiations last year during a standoff over its nuclear and missile programs but has reached out to Washington, Seoul and Beijing in recent months.

Analysts say the about-face shows its government is feeling the pinch from U.N.-imposed sanctions and may agree to return to the talks in exchange for aid. Impoverished North Korea relies on outside handouts to feed its 24 million people, and the food shortage is expected to be worse this year, the state-run Korea Rural Economic Institute in Seoul said.

North Korea wants the sanctions eased and is seeking a peace treaty with the U.S. formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War before it returns to the disarmament talks.

The foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan, meeting in Seoul, said North Korea must return to the disarmament talks and show progress on denuclearization before any discussions on a peace treaty or sanctions can be held. Washington also says Pyongyang must return to the talks before any discussions about political and economic concessions.

“We shared the view that North Korea’s return to the six-party talks and substantial progress in its denuclearization must be made first,” South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan told reporters Thursday.

“Sanctions are having an effect” on North Korea, Kazuo Kodama, press secretary at Japan’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Seoul. “We will pursue the avenue of dialogue and at the same time apply pressure.”

Associated Press writers Kwang-tae Kim in Seoul and Alexa Olesen in Beijing contributed to this report.