Pyongyang has invited top envoys of US President Barack Obama to visit North Korea in what would be the first nuclear negotiations between the two countries under his presidency, a news report said yesterday.
North Korea recently offered the invitation to Stephen Bosworth, special envoy to North Korea, and chief nuclear negotiator Sung Kim, and the US government is strongly considering sending them to the North next month, Seoul's JoongAng Ilbo daily reported.
The US embassy in Seoul said it had no comment on the report.
The JoongAng report, citing an unidentified high-level diplomatic source in Washington, said the US diplomats might be able to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during the visit, considering Pyongyang's recent conciliatory attitude.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a diplomatic source in Washington as saying the North extended the invitation when former US president Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang this month to win the release of two jailed US journalists.
US officials have said they are willing to hold direct talks with North Korea but only as part of six-country disarmament negotiations involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
Officials from the two biggest US military allies in the region — Japan and South Korea — have said they would go along with direct US-North Korean talks as long as Washington coordinates and consults with them.
“We are sticking to our existing position that we will continue faithfully carrying out UN resolutions while urging North Korea to return to six-party talks,” Seoul's foreign ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said regarding talks over the weekend between Bosworth and South Korean officials.
The six-party talks, hosted by the North's biggest benefactor China, broke down at the end of last year with Pyongyang saying the format was dead.
Analysts said the talks among the Red Cross societies from the two Koreas for the reunions could solve another problem by leading to the release of four South Korean fishermen held for weeks in the North after their boat crossed a nautical border.
North Korea also re-opened one of the few hotlines between the Koreas after cutting the communication link about a year ago.
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