A senior North Korean foreign ministry official will make a rare trip to the US soon, becoming the highest-ranking figure from Pyongyang to visit since US President George W. Bush took office.
News of the planned US visit by Ri Gun, deputy head of US affairs at North Korea's foreign ministry, came as the State Department's point man on the crisis over North Korea's nuclear programs headed to Beijing for talks.
The US embassy declined to comment on Ri's expected trip, which would follow on the heels of a visit to Washington by Pyongyang's UN ambassador -- the first allowed by the Bush administration.
"He is going to Washington, I believe, quite soon," a South Korean diplomat said yesterday, referring to Ri.
"He is going ... to attend some seminar," the diplomat said.
A Chinese expert on North Korea said Ri, a key negotiator at six-party talks on the crisis, would visit the US soon, though the dates were not clear.
A diplomatic source in Tokyo said Ri would also visit New York for about a week and attend a gathering of scholars, experts and officials on Aug. 10.
Ri was also likely to meet US officials and to discuss the nuclear issue, said the source who declined to be identified.
The US State Department's North Korea negotiator, Joseph DeTrani, was due in Beijing shortly, an embassy official said yesterday.
Ri's visit to Washington would follow last week's visit to the US capital by the North Korean envoy to the UN, Pak Gil-yon.
His presence there possibly reflected progress at recent talks to end North Korea's nuclear-weapons programs.
North Korea's UN ambassador must obtain State Department permission to travel outside a 40km radius around New York city.
Ri was chief negotiator at three-party talks between North Korea, the US and host China in April of last year, and has been in the delegation at later rounds of six-way talks that included South Korea, Japan and Russia.
Meanwhile, China is proposing that six-party "working level" talks on North Korea's nuclear programs be held from Aug. 11 to Aug. 14, Japanese public broadcaster NHK television reported yesterday.
Quoting unidentified Chinese government officials in Beijing, NHK said China was stressing that the working-level talks should be held in the middle of next month so that senior-level six-way talks could take place by the end of September.
Japan's top government spo-kesman, Hiroyuki Hosoda, said yesterday that no dates for working-level talks had been set.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS