From news reports



The United States will soon announce plans to hold high-level bilateral dialogue with North Korea to woo the North back to the six-party nuclear talks that were stalled over international sanctions for Pyongyang`s nuclear and missile tests, a senior State Department official said Friday.

"I think the announcement will come before (President Barack Obama embarks on his Asian trip early next week)," said the official, asking for anonymity. "I think it may be this weekend."

The trip to Pyongyang by Stephen Bosworth, U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, however, will not take place before Obama returns from his Asian trip on Nov. 19, the official said.

Bosworth said Thursday that he expects the U.S. government will "soon" make a decision on his trip to Pyongyang, possibly "within a few weeks."

A senior Asia adviser to President Obama said Friday that the United States is prepared for direct talks with North Korea but only if the North understands that such contact must set the stage for the scrapping of its nuclear program.



Jeffrey Bader told an audience at a Washington think tank that the administration is not interested in "talks for talks` sake."

"We are not interested in buying Yongbyon for a third time. We are not interested in endorsing North Korea`s dream of validation of a self-claimed nuclear power," said Bader, senior director for East Asian affairs at the National Security Council.

The North`s nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, north of its capital, Pyongyang, had been frozen and dismantled under previous nuclear agreements for the past couple of decades or so, but Pyongyang began reactivating them recently in anger over the international sanctions.

Also Friday, Scott Snyder, director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy at the Asia Society, said he and Jack Pritchard, a special envoy for negotiations with North Korea early in the administration of President George W. Bush, planned to travel to North Korea to meet with officials this month.

Snyder said it was unclear which officials they would meet with, but that the North was issuing visas for their trip.

After months of provocations, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in August indirectly extended an invitation to Bosworth and recently agreed to return to the six-party talks pending the outcome of bilateral talks with the United States.

U.S. officials see the North`s recent conciliatory overtures as the result of international financial sanctions and an overall arms embargo, which they said effectively cut off revenues from arms sales, the only source of hard currency for the impoverished communist state.

Bader regards the North`s gesture as traditional brinkmanship.

"Once the cycle of provocations was completed, North Korea sat back to wait for a newer package of concessions from the U.S.," Bader told a forum at the Brookings Institution. "In close cooperation with our partners, we have passed a U.N. Security Council resolution to impose new sanctions on North Korea. But more importantly, we have implemented it. The result has been to make it significantly difficult for North Korea to conduct financial transactions to support its weapons of mass destruction programs."

Bader said that Washington wants to see North Korea show signs of sincerity in its denuclearization.

"We want to see genuine signs that North Koreans understand the six-party process is the right framework and that denuclearization is the agenda, that the 2005 agreement remains binding ... If we see that, there is no problem with bilateral contacts either in Pyongyang or elsewhere," he said.

Bader expressed "a high level of satisfaction with how we are doing with the Chinese on North Korea."

China, the host of the six-party talks since their inception in 2003, is the staunchest ally and the biggest benefactor of the isolated and impoverished North and is seen as the chief influence on its communist neighbor.

"The consultations with the Chinese over North Korea are extremely intensive and in depth," he said. "President Obama made several phone calls to President Hu (Jintao). If you did a pie chart on how much time was spent on these issues, North Korea would dominate."

China has been supportive of implementing U.N. sanctions on North Korea, he said. "I have no doubt the Chinese are serious when they say they will not tolerate a nuclear North Korea any longer.

"That is their strategic objective. They understand how damaging it is to their own strategic interests and their relations with surrounding countries."