Tokyo, June 14, Kyodo/OANA/IRNA -- China has decided to hold the third round of six-nation talks on North Korea`s nuclear ambitions June 23-26 in Beijing, conference sources said Monday. It has already informed the other participants -- Japan, North and South Korea, Russia and the United States -- of the schedule and is set to announce it as early as Tuesday, the sources said.
The schedule also includes holding working-group discussions June 21 and 22 to lay the groundwork for the plenary session, they said. International attention is focused on whether North Korea will present a time frame for freezing its nuclear weapons programs during the talks and detail its offer to allow inspections of the freeze, the sources said.
The six nations plan to resume their talks in line with an agreement they reached on wrapping up the last round of full talks in February that they would hold the next gathering by the end of June. Last week, the Group of Eight major countries supported the six-nation dialogue framework in a chairman`s summary released after the G-8 summit at Sea Island, Georgia. The United States has repeatedly urged North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs in `a complete, verifiable and irreversible` manner.
But North Korea has rejected the demand, saying nuclear programs for peaceful use should be tolerated. A senior official in the Japanese Foreign Ministry has said major
progress toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is unlikely to come out of the upcoming session due to the big differences in the positions of the United States and North Korea. That pessimistic view had prompted China to consider delaying the round until July to seek a breakthrough through more negotiations including behind-the-scenes talks, the conference sources said.
The host country appeared to think that making progress should take priority over holding a formal session as agreed, but finally decided to host the talks next week at the request of many of the other five, the sources said. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has said his country is willing to continue participating in the multilateral framework, freeze programs for nuclear weapons to achieve the goal of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, and allow inspections of the freeze.
Kim made the commitments during his visit to China in mid-April and at his summit with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on May 22 in Pyongyang. North Korea has also denied US allegations that it has highly enriched uranium for nuclear arms. Japan, for its part, is expected to seek bilateral talks with North Korea on the sidelines of the talks to increase pressure on Pyongyang to settle the dispute over its abductions of Japanese, a main obstacle to normalizing bilateral ties.
The six nations failed to bridge the gap in positions during the first working-group meeting held in Beijing in May, only reaffirming their agreement to hold full talks by the end of June.
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