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N. Korea, U.S. agree to restart talks

P. S. Suryanarayana

Dates for dialogue yet to be fixed

SINGAPORE: North Korea and the United States on Wednesday agreed to resume the long-stalled six-party talks on the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, but no date was immediately announced.

This followed the latest exploratory talks in Beijing between the chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill and his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-gwan at the bilateral level and with the Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Wu Dawei.

China hosts the six-party parleys. South Korea, Japan, and Russia are the other participants in this process.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said China, North Korea, and the U.S. had now agreed to make "joint efforts" to resume the six-party parleys "as soon as possible." The "in-depth" exploratory talks in this regard were held in a "frank" atmosphere, and this had "increased mutual understanding" among these three countries.

In the wake of North Korea's nuclear-weapon test on October 9 and the United Nations Security Council's follow-up sanctions on Pyongyang, China brokered on October 31 a diplomatic breakthrough to revive the six-party talks. The latest understanding among China, North Korea, and the U.S. is in furtherance of the efforts to resume the dialogue that has remained stalled for over a year.

Regional diplomats and observers said the issues that would need to be addressed further before any re-start of the dialogue process were North Korea's insistence on being recognised as a nuclear-armed state and the modalities of resolving the differences over the U.S.' financial sanctions on Pyongyang. Washington has taken the line that these sanctions are unrelated to North Korea's nuclear-weapons programme.

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