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US envoy delivered Obama letter to NKorea leader: official
Washington (AFP) Dec 16, 2009 US envoy Stephen Bosworth gave the North Koreans a letter from President Barack Obama for their leader Kim Jong-Il amid efforts to revive nuclear disarmament talks, a US official said Tuesday. "I can only confirm there was such a letter, but I cannot discuss the content or the tone," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told journalists when asked about a Washington Post report concerning the letter. "However, I think one can feel very confident it concerned what our very simple agenda was for the visit of Ambassador Bosworth and that was to get North Korea to come back to the six-party talks," Kelly said. The nuclear disarmament talks involve the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia. He added he was not aware that Bosworth had received a reply to the letter. The US envoy's groundbreaking visit to North Korea from December 8 to 10 was the first direct contact between Washington and Pyongyang under the Obama's tenure. The president has pledged diplomacy with US adversaries. While Bosworth described his talks in Pyongyang as "useful, business-like and characterized by candor," he reiterated that the United States has no plans for further bilateral consultations with the North. The two sides said they had reached a "common understanding" on the need to resume the six-nation negotiations hosted by China, following the visit. Bosworth voiced concerns during his visit about the country's uranium enrichment programme, a South Korean ruling party official said earlier Tuesday.
earlier related report "Our proposal ... is to open a permanent structure of cooperation with North Korea -- humanitarian, cultural and linguistic cooperation," the envoy, Jack Lang, told a hearing of members of parliament. "The wish expressed by the French state is to turn a new page in relations with North Korea," he added, reporting on recent meetings with North Korean leaders and other countries concerned with negotiations with Pyongyang. He told the hearing that North Korea had promised not to contribute to nuclear proliferation by transferring nuclear fissile material, and was open to talks on human rights. UN human rights experts have accused the reclusive totalitarian state of carrying out torture and forced labour. Most European Union countries opened up to relations with North Korea in 2000, but France resisted, saying at the time that the human rights situation there must improve and citing concerns over proliferation of nuclear missiles. Lang said France was the only European Union country apart from Latvia not to have diplomatic relations with North Korea. His mission had raised the prospect of gaining leverage with it on the sensitive issue of disarmament. France is not part of the key six-nation nuclear disarmament talks -- between the North and South Korea, Japan, Russia, the United States, China -- but is one of the five veto-wielding permanent UN Security Council members. The North quit the six-party disarmament talks in April and conducted an atomic weapons test in May, its second since 2006. Lang said France proposed to strengthen relations with Pyongyang "step by step" but without fully diplomatic relations "in the immediate term". He cited work by a handful of French non-governmental aid organisations as well as small-scale linguistic and agricultural cooperation projects, which he wants to expand by setting up a "permanent structure" in North Korea. A senior US official, Stephen Bosworth, visited Pyongyang early this month but said afterwards that no date was set for the six-party negotiations to be resumed. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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US envoy voiced concern about N.Korea uranium: officialSeoul (AFP) Dec 15, 2009 US envoy Stephen Bosworth voiced concerns during his visit to North Korea last week about the country's uranium enrichment programme, a South Korean ruling party official said Tuesday. South Korea's chief nuclear envoy Wi Sung-Lac told lawmakers that the US envoy had raised concerns about the enrichment programme at talks with North Korean officials, a Grand National Party (GNP) official ... read more |
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