A senior US diplomat plans to visit North Korea this week in a bid to salvage a faltering international effort to get the communist country to give up nuclear weapons, US officials said on Saturday.
Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator in the six-nation talks, will leave for South Korea today and is expected to travel to the North shortly afterward amid growing concern the often-delayed disarmament negotiation is on the verge of collapse, the officials said.
US and North Korean diplomats met last week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in a sign that talks were not entirely dead. Hill and a small team plan to continue those talks in the North Korean capital, an official said, but it is not clear that Hill is bringing a new proposal to break the latest impasse.
Hill also held strategy sessions last week with envoys from the other four nations that have offered the North economic and political rewards for giving up a nuclear stockpile believed to be equal to about six bombs, and the means to make more.
The US, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia are trying to persuade North Korea not to return its main nuclear complex to working order. The five nations bargaining with the North also want it to accept a plan to verify that it has fully accounted for all past atomic activities — the crux of the latest and potentially deal-killing impasse.
Sean McCormack, a spokesman for the US State Department, confirmed Hill would fly to Seoul today. He would not comment on any other stops Hill might make.
Other officials said Hill intended to visit North Korea to revive the six-nation process that has deteriorated since last month, when North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is believed to have suffered a stroke and his country edged closer to restarting the disabled nuclear reactor.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Hill’s plans have not yet been announced and his mission in North Korea has not yet been fully defined. The Washington Post first reported on the travel plans on its Web site on Saturday.
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