Six-way meeting on peace regime opens in Moscow

MOSCOW, Feb. 19 (Yonhap) -- North Korea and its five dialogue partners in the often troubled nuclear talks began a two-day meeting of working-level officials in Moscow to discuss peace and security in Northeast Asia.

The third working group meeting on the Northeast Asia peace and security
mechanism is to explore detailed ways to bring lasting peace to the region.
Russia has already presented a second draft of guiding principles, organizers
said.
"A draft of the guiding principles of peace was drawn up as the first step in
forming this mechanism. It was dispatched to all the participants in the
'sextet,'" Grigory Loginov, the ambassador at large at the Russian Foreign
Ministry, told Russia's news agency, Itar-Tass.
Russia chairs the forum in the framework of the broader six-party talks also
involving the U.S., China, Japan, and the two Koreas. The other four working
groups are designed to discuss energy assistance for North Korea, denuclearizing
the Korean Peninsula, normalizing North Korea-U.S. relations and normalizing
North Korea-Japan ties.
This week's gathering sets the stage for the first government-level contact since
U.S. President Barack Obama's inauguration among the six nations.
Delegates expect no immediate tangible outcome from the meeting, as the six-way
talks among higher-level envoys remain stalled over how to inspect North Korea's
nuclear facilities in an effort to verify its nuclear declaration submitted in
June last year.
South Korea is represented by Hur Chul, director general of the foreign
ministry's Korean Peninsula peace regime bureau.