US Official Says DPRK Shows No Signs of Returning to Talks on Nuclear Program (AFP)
North Korea shows no signs yet of willingness to return to talks on its nuclear programme, a senior US envoy said Monday as he pushed a two-track strategy of tougher sanctions and offers of dialogue.
"Nothing right now," said Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, when asked by AFP if the North has shown any signs it is open to negotiation.
Campbell, making his first trip to South Korea since taking over the post last month, was speaking after a meeting with Seoul's nuclear negotiator Wi Sung-Lac.
"We have to closely work together on how to implement the Security Council resolution and on the other hand... we have to think about resumption of dialogue as well," Wi told the US envoy before their closed-door talks.
Campbell, on arrival from Japan Saturday, had outlined what he called a two-track strategy involving tougher sanctions but also negotiations if the North is willing to give up its nuclear ambitions.
The international standoff over the North's nuclear and missile programmes has intensified in recent months.
After the United Nations Security Council censured its April 5 long-range rocket launch, the North announced it was quitting six-party nuclear disarmament talks with the United States, South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan.
It staged its second nuclear test on May 25, prompting the Council to adopt a resolution imposing tougher sanctions.
Last Thursday it imposed a travel ban on five North Korean officials and asset freezes on five more entities involved in the banned weapons programmes.
Campbell Saturday had urged the impoverished North to return to six-party talks, warning it would otherwise face more isolation and economic hardship.
"Truth of the matter is, down this path North Korea has chosen lie greater tensions, greater hardships for its people, more isolation and lack of engagement in the international economy," he told journalists.
"I think it's unsustainable, and we believe that over time, North Korea will ultimately choose to re-engage."
After a scheduled meeting with Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan Monday afternoon, Campbell was to leave for Thailand for the ASEAN Regional Forum on security issues. North Korea is expected to be high on the agenda.
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N. Korea, U.S. unlikely to have bilateral meeting at ASEAN forum (Yonhap)
SEOUL – North Korea and the United States are unlikely to hold a bilateral meeting at the upcoming ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which Pyongyang's chief diplomat is not expected to attend, Seoul's foreign minister said Monday.
North Korea has notified host Thailand that it will send a vice foreign minister-level official, not its Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun, to the forum set for Thursday in the Thai resort island of Phuket. The decision came as Pyongyang is locked in a tense standoff with the outside world over its missile and nuclear programs.
"It (bilateral contact) won't be easy, unless Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun of the North is coming," Seoul's Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan told reporters before leaving for Thailand.
Yu said the Thai government and other sources have confirmed to Seoul that the North is sending Park Keun-gwang, a vice foreign minister-level ambassador, to ARF on behalf of the foreign minister.
North Korea has often dispatched its foreign minister to the annual event, which groups 10 ASEAN member countries and 17 other nations. The participants include the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, and the two Koreas who make up the six-way talks on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.
The U.S. has said its delegation, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will attend the ARF.
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N. Korea silent over possible flood damage (Yonhap)
SEOUL – Heavy rains hit Pyongyang and North Korea's northern region over the weekend, raising concerns of recurring casualties and damage to farms, but it is difficult for outsiders to assess the losses yet, Seoul officials said Monday.
The North's state media said Pyongyang had 233 millimeters of rain over the span of 18 hours. Yodok in South Hamgyong Province, a northern mountainous county infamous for a political prisoners' camp there, had 287mm, it said. There was no mention of flood damage.
"As of now, there have been reports on the amounts of rainfall, but none about any damage caused as a result. It is difficult to find out if there is any flood damage in the North" in the absence of North Korean media reports, Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung said in a briefing.
Officials in Seoul forecast that this year's damage so far may not be as severe as that which followed heavy rains in the country in 2006 or 2007. Since this year's monsoon season began on the peninsula on June 20, the rain has fallen intermittently and at irregular locations in North Korea, possibly lessening its impact, they said. Rainfall started in the South and moved northward.
"In 2007, the rain fell for over 10 days, and it came constantly, with precipitation of up to 700 millimeters. It's different now," a ministry official said, asking to remain anonymous.
According to the Korea Meteorological Administration in Seoul, Pyongyang had 453mm of rain over the past three weeks, while the Pyonggang county in southern Kangwon Province had 643.5mm, and Kaesong, just north of the inter-Korean border, 358.7mm. Northern towns of Huichon in Jagang Province and Hamghung in South Hamgyong Province had 399.1mm and 219.3mm, respectively.
Kwon Tae-jin, an analyst with the state-run Korea Rural Economic Institute in Seoul, said the downpours in Pyongyang over the weekend "must have been difficult to handle," but there would have been far greater damage had the rain hit the country's central region, where the headwaters of the Taedong River and the Imjin River that flow westward originate.
"Heavy rains there (in the headwaters) directly affect the western region where 70 percent of North Korean farmlands are located. Rains in Pyongyang may affect households and facilities, but not much farmland," he said.
Kwon also said North Korea "won't try to hide its flood damage when it occurs at a time when international aid has already dwindled."
Seasonal floods are common in North Korea where decades of deforestation have left the country without a natural protection of tree cover.
Unusually mild weather last year allowed North Korea's grain harvest to expand to 4.3 million tons, compared with 4 million tons in 2007, according to South Korean government data.
Unprecedentedly heavy rainfall in July 2007 left about 500 people dead or missing and about 900,000 victims of the flood, according to North Korean and U.N. reports. Flood damage forced North Korea to postpone the second leaders' summit with South Korea to October from August that year.
After downpours in July 2006, 844 people were reported dead or missing, and 28,000 households were affected. No flood casualties were reported last year.
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U.S., DPRK Negotiate Over Detained Journalists (Chosun Ilbo)
The U.S. and North Korea have started delicate negotiations over two American journalists who were detained and sentenced to hard labor in North Korea, an influential source in Washington said Sunday. The next three or four weeks will be crucial in deciding whether the two women can walk free.
The U.S. House of Representatives intended last week to adopt a resolution urging the North to release reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling, and the Senate intended to follow suit, but their plans have been postponed at the State Department's request, the source said. The State Department made the request to Congress because it fears that a resolution could anger the North at a time when the two countries have entered sensitive negotiations, the source added.
Earlier, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on July 10 asked the North to grant the two an amnesty and allow them to return home to their families.
John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 and former U.S. vice president Al Gore, the founder of the TV station the two reporters work for are being mentioned as possible special envoys to Pyongyang, other sources said.
The U.S. government treats the release of the journalists is a separate issue from the North's nuclear provocations, but their release could lead to fresh nuclear talks.
Gary Samore, a non-proliferation expert and WMD coordinator at the White House, said, "All the sort of straws in the wind vindicate that North Koreans are probably looking for a way to get back to the bargaining table."
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