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U.S. Envoy Arrives in Seoul for North Korea Nuke Talks

Musharraf flatly denied reports of Pakistani cooperation with North Korea in nuclear programs

SEOUL, October 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Within the U.S declared “policy of diplomacy and consultation”, after North Korea's bombshell admission that it has been pursuing a nuclear weapons program, a senior U.S. envoy arrived in South Korea Saturday, October 19, for talks on the crisis.

James Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, flew into Seoul from Beijing as part of U.S. diplomatic efforts to step up international pressure to persuade Pyongyang to drop its nuclear ambitions.

"He is meeting with South Korean officials," said a spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul.

South Korean officials, for their part, said Kelly would meet Foreign Minister Choi Sung-Hong, President Kim Dae-Jung's top advisor on North Korea Lim Dong-Won and another senior presidential advisor Yim Sung-Joon, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The two sides are expected to discuss ways of how to resolve the issue through peaceful means," a South Korean government official told Yonhap news agency.

He said concrete steps will be determined at a three-way summit between the United States, South Korea and Japan at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum late this month in Mexico.

While in Beijing, Kelly and John Bolton, the Undersecretary of State for arms control, reportedly urged China to use its leverage on its ally North Korea to drop its nuclear program.

Bolton left Beijing for Moscow and will later go to London, Paris and Brussels for talks with the world's other major nuclear powers. Kelly will fly from Seoul to Tokyo on Sunday, October 20.

Meanwhile, a high-powered South Korean delegation arrived in Pyongyang Saturday in an effort to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear weapons program, revelations about which have recently stunned the world.

The five-member mission headed by Unification Minister Jeong Se-Hyun landed at Pyongyang's Sunan airport after flying on a direct inter-Korean air route off the western coast, officials of the Ministry said.

Before his departure, Jeong said the South will urge the North to scrap its nuclear program and abide by agreements, including a 1994 deal under which the communist state should have decommissioned it.

"The circumstances are in many ways not so favorable... We will tell the North clearly what we think about its nuclear situation and other matters," Jeong said.

"We will make efforts to resolve the nuclear issue on the one hand and push forward with the agreed-upon agenda for reconciliation and exchange on the other," added Jeong.

The ministerial talks, set to last four days, were originally scheduled to discuss ways of strengthening ties between the two Koreas.

But the talks are expected to be overshadowed by renewed concerns over the North's pursuit of nuclear arms after Pyongyang admitted that it had an ongoing program to develop atomic weapons.

Jeong declined to say whether the delegation would meet North Korea's top leader, Kim Jong-Il.

"We are going there for ministerial talks," he said.

The high-level meeting offers the first opportunity to explore North Korea's response to a U.S. statement that the North admitted to running a clandestine uranium-enrichment program.

"We still don't know exactly where the North Korean nuclear program is. We don't know whether it has merely a plan (to develop weapons) or building facilities," Jeong said.

President Kim Dae-Jung on Friday October 18, said he believed the issue could be settled peacefully.

"The fact that the North may seek dialogue give us hope," Kim said.

Aides in Washington said President George W. Bush, who will meet China's President Jiang Zemin in Texas next Friday, is committed to finding a peaceful and diplomatic way out of the crisis.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency quoted foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue as saying Beijing wanted the Korean peninsula kept free of nuclear weapons.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Friday October 18, North Korea has to observe international arrangements in nuclear and other issues if it wants to make progress in normalization talks with Tokyo.

A senior South Korean government official told AFP the delegation would stress that the North had to abandon its nuclear weapons program or face the collapse of its recent drive for international acceptance.

The U.S. government announced Wednesday, October 16, that the North had admitted to having a secret nuclear weapons program during U.S. special envoy James Kelly's visit to Pyongyang on October 3 and 5.

Washington accused the North of violating the 1994 agreement by continuing to build nuclear bombs with enriched uranium.

The North Korean shock admission after decades of angry denials baffled experts and analysts, with some seeing the confession as a blunder and others as a bargaining ploy.

Pyongyang courted Washington for years in an effort to win improved ties and the economic rewards its impoverished country and famished people so desperately need.

"It is hard to understand why North Korea should have said something like that as it has been seeking to normalize ties with Washington," said Lee Jong-Seok, an analyst at Seoul's Sejong Institute.

The North Korea may have been seeking to raise the stakes in negotiations with the United States to secure the highest possiblpay-off for meeting Washington's conditions for improved ties.

"North Korea has taken out a new bargaining chip to push the United States toward a package deal," said Park Hong-Kyu, an analyst at the state-run Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security.

"The North apparently wanted to receive as much as possible from the United States in return for giving up its nuclear material and missiles."

The announcement of the admission has put South Korea in a difficult spot, said Lee, with Washington's tough stance on the North's nuclear program threatening to derail South Korea's new attempt to coax the rival North into dialogue.

Washington said there would be no dialogue with the North as a result of the admission.

South Korea officials are reluctant to acknowledge a policy gap between Seoul and its key ally, saying the United States has supported President Kim Dae-Jung's policy of seeking rapprochement with North Korea.

In a separate related development, the United States refused on Friday October 18, to comment on reports that Pakistan had supplied equipment to North Korea that could have helped the reclusive Stalinist state develop its nuclear weapons program.

"I'm not in a position to comment one way or the other," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, following regular protocol of U.S. officials who decline to comment on intelligence matters.

Other senior U.S. officials followed suit throughout the day.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf earlier Friday dismissed the reports in The New York Times as "baseless.

"There is no such thing, this is absolutely baseless," Musharraf told a news conference in Islamabad.

"There is no such thing as collaboration with North Korea in the nuclear arena," he said a day after the shock revelation that the communist regime had secretly been developing nuclear weapons.

"Pakistan has several times and I have said personally that Pakistan would never proliferate nuclear technology and we stand by this commitment," he told the joint news conference, held with visiting Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.