AFTER A daring nuclear test and a series of banned missile tests heightened anxiety in Asia over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, the secretive Stalinist state has indicated it is ready to end months of deadlock and reopen dialogue about its atomic weapons programme.
Pyongyang’s focus appears to be on one-on-one talks with the United States, which seems to indicate an unwillingness to return to the six-party talks that have sought in vain to find a solution to the issue for years.
“There is a specific and reserved form of dialogue that can address the current situation,” the North Korean foreign ministry said in remarks run by the official Korean Central News Agency.
While there was no detail on exactly what that dialogue would involve, it’s an open secret that Pyongyang is keen on direct negotiations with Washington.
Hours before the North Korean statement, US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton described the six-nation talks as “the appropriate way to engage with North Korea”. The US is however willing to hold direct talks with North Korea, but only on the sidelines of a new round of the six-party talks, which feature both Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US.
North Korea’s UN ambassador said his government was not opposed to negotiations with the United States on issues of common concern.
“We are not against a dialogue. We are not against any negotiations on issues of common concern,” ambassador Sin Son Ho told reporters at the North Korean mission in New York.
North Korea reiterated its scorn for the six-party talks.
“It became all the more clear that other parties are taking advantage of these six-party talks to seek their ulterior aims to disarm and incapacitate the (North) so that it can only subsist on the breadcrumbs thrown away by them,” it said.
Despite the repeated opposition to the six-party talks, signs of a willingness for dialogue mark the first positive developments in the North Korean missile crisis in months.
After Mrs Clinton accused the North Koreans of behaving like unruly children, Pyongyang responded by describing her as “by no means intelligent” and a “funny lady”.
Meanwhile, Chinese media reported that border police had seized 70kg of the strategic metal vanadium bound for North Korea, foiling an attempt to smuggle a material used to make missile parts.
The UN Security Council has tightened restrictions on North Korea in response to its May 25th nuclear test. The sanctions are meant to cut off the North’s arms trade.
North Korea has ratcheted up tensions in the region significantly in recent months. It conducted a long-range rocket launch in April, quit the six-nation nuclear talks, restarted its nuclear facilities, conducted its second ever nuclear test and test-launched a barrage of banned ballistic missiles.