News Flash

Bosworth visit to bring DPRK back to six-party talks

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-12-09 23:39

WASHINGTON -- Stephen Bosworth, U.S. special envoy for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), aims to bring Pyongyang back to the stalled six-party talks in his visit which began Tuesday, said a U.S. State Department spokesman.

Spokesman Philip Crowley said in a Washington briefing Tuesday that Bosworth's visit aims to see if the DPRK "is prepared to return to six-party talks and to reaffirm their commitments under the 2005 joint communique."

Bosworth arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday afternoon, and was hurried away for meetings, without talking to reporters.

Crowley said Bosworth would have "high-level, authoritative interactions" with DPRK officials, and the primary meetings would occur Wednesday. But he said the envoy is not in place to send out "play by play" reports on Tuesday, and he is unsure who he has already met.

The DPRK shut down Yongbyon nuclear facilities in 2007 in a deal reached during the six-party talks. In April, it quit the six- party talks and announced it was resuming the reprocessing of plutonium from spent fuel rods at the reactor there.

The DPRK conducted an underground nuclear test in May and declared it was in the final phase of an experimental, highly enriched uranium program -- another way to make an atomic bomb.

However, tensions began to thaw recently, and the DPRK has expressed willingness to return to the six-party talks involving itself, the United States, China, the Republic of Korea, Japan and Russia, if it has satisfactory talks with Washington.