Informal talks made no progress on resuming 6-way talks: State Dept.

(ATTN: ADDS Glaser's remarks in paras 14-16)
By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 (Yonhap) -- The United States and North Korea failed to make
progress toward the resumption of six-party nuclear negotiations during talks
held on the margins of an academic seminar in San Diego, the U.S. State
Department said Wednesday.

Sung Kim, U.S. special envoy for the six-party talks, met with Ri Gun, director
general of the North American affairs bureau of the North's foreign ministry, on
the sidelines of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Dialogue (NEACD) Monday and
Tuesday at the University of California, San Diego, a State Department official
said.
"He did have informal talks with North Koreans and the other delegations," the
official said, requesting anonymity. "I think it was a good dialogue and they
were able to air a lot of issues, but I am not prepared to say there was progress
towards resuming the six-party talks."
The anonymous official said that Kim will likely attend another seminar in New
York hosted by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and the Korea
Society Friday to continue informal talks with Ri, who is also attending the
seminar.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Kim is returning to Washington later
Wednesday
"We expect to have a readout from him when he comes back ... sometime tomorrow,"
he said. "But I don't have any other announcements regarding bilateral talks with
North Korea."
In a previous hour-long meeting with Ri in New York Friday, Kim called on the
North to return to the six-party talks, deadlocked over U.N. sanctions on North
Korea for its nuclear and missile tests.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said Monday that the bilateral
dialogue between Ri and Kim focused on a visit to Pyongyang by Stephen Bosworth,
U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, for a breakthrough on the
stalled nuclear negotiations.
In a conciliatory gesture after months of provocations, North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il expressed his willingness to come back to the talks when he met with
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao earlier this month in Pyongyang.
Kim, however, linked the North's participation to the outcome of bilateral talks
with the U.S.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week left open the possibility
of bilateral dialogue.
"Within the framework of the six-party talks, we are prepared to meet bilaterally
with North Korea," she said. "But North Korea's return to the negotiating table
is not enough."
Clinton also said that the U.S. will not lift sanctions on North Korea or
normalize ties unless Pyongyang takes irreversible steps toward denuclearization.
Daniel Glaser, deputy assistant secretary of treasury for terrorist financing and
financial crimes, echoed Clinton's remarks at a forum sponsored by the Institute
for Corean-American Studies (ICAS) here.
"I think sanctions are an important part of our policy on North Korea ... to
advance the U.S. government's foreign policy goal for the complete, verifiable
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in an irreversible sense," Glaser said.
"We will continue to implement international financial sanctions."
Glaser, however, said that sanctions "are one component of our broader policy,"
stressing the need to "do major things to try to achieve our policy goals we set
up" and consider "what combinations of our policy initiatives will ultimately
achieve our success."
Georgy Toloraya, director of the Korean Program at the Russian Academy of
Science, meanwhile, described the atmosphere of the seminar in San Diego as "much
better (than) it used to be just several months ago."
"There are better attitudes from both parties, from the U.S. administration and
the North Korean side," Toloraya said in the ICAS forum, coming fresh from the
two-day NEACD seminar in San Diego.
"They are prepared to get back to multi-party negotiations, but not necessarily
the six-party talks. And it will depend on the outcome of the bilateral
negotiations with the United States," he cited the North Koreans as saying at the
seminar.
The Russian scholar said that the Obama administration "still has a wait-and-see
position, and there is no strategic decision in the U.S. whether the U.S. can
coexist with the North Korean regime in its current form."
"While North Koreans present very clear-cut concepts on what has to be done on a
peace treaty, normalization of relations, et cetera, there is no clear concept
from the United States and I think the arguments are still continuing within the
U.S.," he said.
Toloraya did not expect North Korea would abandon its nuclear weapons "before
they get some tangible results ... some security guarantees and a security regime
in Korea."
hdh@yna.co.kr
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