Bosworth named as special representative for six-party talks: State Dept. By Hwang Doo-hyong

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (Yonhap) -- Former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Stephen Bosworth has been appointed as special representative for North Korea, overseeing the six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions, the State Department said Friday.

"Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has appointed Ambassador Stephen W.
Bosworth as special representative for North Korea policy," the department said
in a statement. "Ambassador Bosworth will be our senior official handling North
Korea issues, reporting to the secretary of state, as well as to the president."
Sung Kim, special envoy for the six-party talks, will retain his current position
to "handle the day-to-day contacts and discussions with our six-party
colleagues," deputy spokesman Gordon Duguid told a daily news briefing, adding
Bosworth "will be the special representative coordinating the overall U.S.
government effort."
"A special envoy in diplomatic parlance has the authority to negotiate," the
spokesman said. "A special representative in this particular case, as well as in
Ambassador Holbrooke's case, is an authority who coordinates across the board for
the United States."
Richard Holbrooke was named special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
last month, soon after the appointment of former Sen. George Mitchell as special
envoy for the Middle East.
The Bosworth appointment, announced earlier in the day by Clinton at a joint news
conference in Seoul, comes as nuclear-armed North Korea threatens to test launch
another long range missile capable of reaching the mainland U.S.
Duguid dismissed the suggestion that Bosworth will work on a part-time basis as
he continues his current job as dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy
at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
"Of course, it's a full-time position," he said. "The role that the ambassador
will play will be significant. And it will not be any diminution of the
responsibilities that previous special representatives have had."
Bosworth served as the U.S. ambassador to South Korea for three years until 2000.
He was also the executive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development
Organization, an international consortium charged with building two light-water
reactors for North Korea in return for the North's freezing of its
plutonium-producing reactor under the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework.
The consortium was shut down after the Bush administration took issue with North
Korea's suspected uranium-based nuclear program that derailed the framework
agreement.
A poor prognosis for the six-party talks reportedly led Wendy Sherman, a former
North Korea policy coordinator under the Clinton administration, to reject
Obama's offer of the post accepted by Bosworth. Critics say that almost all
options with regard to North Korea's nuclear program have been exhausted since
negotiations began in the early 1990s.
Outgoing Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who doubled as
Washington's chief nuclear negotiator, reportedly gave short shrift to his
responsibilities for the Asia and Pacific region because of the heavy workload on
the North Korean nuclear issue.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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