Six-way Meeting on Peace Regime Opens in Moscow

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

The meeting was aimed at exploring ways of bringing lasting peace to the region.
Russia has already presented a second draft of proposed 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 Russian news agency Itar-Tass.
Russia chairs the forum in the framework of the broader six-party talks, which
also involving the U.S., China, Japan and the two Koreas.
Another 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 set the stage for the first government-level contact among
the six nations since U.S. President Barack Obama's inauguration.
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.
South Korea was represented by Hur Chul, director general of the foreign ministry's
Korean Peninsula peace regime bureau.