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SEOUL: US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill said
Friday he had had good discussions with senior North Korean
officials on ways to push forward disarmament talks during a rare
visit to the communist nation.
Hill said he spoke with the
North’s Foreign Minister, Pak Ui Chun, and Kim Kye Gwan, who is
its chief envoy to six-party negotiations aimed at ending the
state’s nuclear program in return for aid and diplomatic gains.
“It’s [been] a very good
discussion and on the way forward and the need to move forward,”
he said in remarks carried by China’s Xinhua news agency.
“I think we’re talking about
trying to have a six-party meeting as soon as possible,” Hill
added in Pyongyang before heading to Seoul.
His visit came ahead of the
scheduled arrival next week of inspectors from the UN nuclear
watchdog—the first time they will have been back since being
kicked out in late 2002—to discuss how to close down the North’s
Yongbyon reactor.
Hill said the United States was
looking for a “comprehensive solution” to both the shutting down
of the North’s nuclear facilities and normalization of diplomatic
ties between the two nations.
He did not specify a date to
resume the six-nation forum, which groups the two Koreas, China,
Russia, Japan, South Korea and the United States.
After returning here he briefed
his South Korean counterpart Chun Yung-Woo and other officials and
was due to fly to Tokyo to inform the Japanese.
South Korean Foreign Minister
Song Min Soon said the six-party process was “gathering
momentum” with Hill’s visit to Pyongyang.
Song will travel next week to
Washington for talks on the denuclearization question with US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Some analysts here say Hill’s
two-day trip, made at Pyongyang’s invitation, indicated the
reclusive regime had made a strategic decision to push forward with
a February 13 agreement on disabling its nuclear programs.
 --AFP
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