U.S. to send delegation to six-party working group meeting in Moscow: State Dept.

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 (Yonhap) -- U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
Alexander Arvizu will fly to Moscow next week to attend a working group meeting
under the six-party talks to end North Korea's nuclear ambitions, the State
Department said Wednesday.
Arvizu will represent the U.S. at the working group meeting on peace and security
in Northeast Asia slated for Feb. 19-20, department spokesman Robert Wood said.
The meeting is to be held amid the plenary session of the six-party talks, which
ran aground in December over North Korea's refusal to allow inspectors to take
samples from its main nuclear reactor to prove its present and past nuclear
activities.
"The review will give us a comprehensive sense of our policy," Wood said. "So the
Russians are going to host this meeting. We're going to have this review, and
that will give everyone a better sense of what our overall policy is going to
be."
The working group, aimed at forging a permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula to
replace the current fragile armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, is one
of four working groups agreed on in a six-party deal that calls for the North's
eventual nuclear dismantlement in return for hefty economic aid and diplomatic
recognition by Washington and Tokyo.
The three other groups focus on denuclearization, energy aid to the North and
normalization of ties between Pyongyang and Washington and Tokyo.
Previous rounds of working group meetings have yet to produce tangible results,
due mainly to the failure of the plenary six-party sessions to make progress on
North Korea's denuclearization amid allegations that Pyongyang is buying time
with the forum without really intending nuclear disarmament.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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