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US firm on talks as NKoreans pay rare visit
Santa Fe, New Mexico (AFP) Aug 20, 2009 The United States insisted Thursday that North Korea return to six-nation nuclear talks, brushing aside an appeal for direct talks by the reclusive state's envoys. The two North Korean diplomats got a rare glimpse of the United States outside of New York, touring a biomass plant in the western state of New Mexico where they voiced interest in bringing alternative energy to their resource-poor nation. The State Department gave the pair, who are accredited at the United Nations in New York, special permission to travel to the southwestern state to see Governor Bill Richardson, a veteran diplomat who hosted them at his sprawling hacienda. Richardson on Wednesday relayed a message from the North Koreans that the release of two US reporters to former president Bill Clinton this month merited a change in heart from Washington on the thorny issue of bilateral talks. But the State Department stood firm that while the United States was ready to meet one-on-one with North Korea, such talks must be part of Pyongyang's return to a six-nation disarmament deal that also includes China, Japan, South Korea and Russia. "We are prepared to have bilateral discussions with North Korea within the framework of six-party talks," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. North Korea in April stormed out of the six-nation agreement under which it was supposed to give up its nuclear program in return for badly needed fuel aid and security guarantees. "As we've made clear to North Korea for a long time, within the six-party framework, there's plenty of room for a bilateral dialogue," Crowley said. "But North Korea knows what it has to do. It has to come back to a six-party process, be willing to take the kinds of steps that the international community has made clear that it needs to do," he said. The hardline communist state in recent months has tested a nuclear bomb and missiles. It said it is motivated by US hostility, although many experts think the actions stem from a succession struggle as leader Kim Jong-Il's health falters. But North Korea has recently made more conciliatory gestures, including scrapping tough border restrictions on South Koreans, meeting with Richardson and freeing the two reporters to Clinton -- the highest-level US contact with Pyongyang in a decade. Kim is also sending a personal wreath with a high-level six-member delegation to Seoul Friday to pay respects to Kim Dae-Jung, a former South Korean president who died this week. Crowley said such gestures "certainly are preferable to provocative actions like firing rockets in the region, but it still remains for North Korea to demonstrate that it's willing to come back to the six-party process." In New Mexico, the North Korean diplomats, Kim Myong-Gil and Paek Jong-Ho, met behind closed doors for three hours at a community college with local experts in alternative energy -- a major issue in the arid western state. Randy Grissom, director of Santa Fe Community College's Sustainable Technologies Center, said the pair voiced interest in producing energy from wind, solar and biomass. "We do know there is at least one wind farm in their country," Grissom said. "There are some issues that they're working with to develop new power sources to address some of their power issues and they were very interested in finding out what are the new technologies that they might learn from us." He said the North Koreans asked about the cost of various technologies and about a college training program in growing non-food plants to produce energy. "They talked about how in their country they have to import all their fossil fuels so if there was some way of growing plants and algae to produce alternatives fuels," he said. North Korea is heavily reliant on Chinese energy imports and suffered a severe famine in the 1990s. It remains technically at war with the prosperous South since the 1950-53 Korean War. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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NKorea holds US talks, moves to ease border restrictionsSeoul (AFP) Aug 21, 2009 North Korea announced on Thursday it was scrapping tough border restrictions it had imposed on South Korean travellers, the latest in a series of conciliatory moves after months of hostility. Pyongyang's diplomats meanwhile held talks in the United States and the communist North announced it is sending a high-level delegation to Seoul to mourn former South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung. ... read more |
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