BEIJING: A senior North Korean official who has been the country’s negotiator at denuclearisation talks will visit Beijing this week, China said yesterday, although analysts were sceptical Pyongyang was about to make concessions on its nuclear programme.
On Sunday, North Korea offered negotiations with Washington to ease tensions after threatening to wage war on the United States and South Korea earlier this year. The White House said any talks must involve actions by Pyongyang to show it is moving towards scrapping its nuclear weapons.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui would meet North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan on Wednesday in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular news briefing.
“Holding this kind of strategic dialogue is because China and North Korea always maintain close communication,” Hua said without giving specific details on what the talks would cover.
Kim was North Korea’s main negotiator at so-called six party talks that aimed to get Pyongyang to halt its nuclear programme. In 2009, Pyongyang said it would never return to those talks.
China, Pyongyang’s only major ally, has repeatedly urged North Korea to return to the six-party framework. The other participants were South Korea, the United States, Japan and Russia.
Some analysts said Kim’s meetings in China would be a way for North Korea to lower tensions without giving in to demands to abandon its nuclear weapons.
North Korea has repeatedly said it will never abandon its nuclear weapons, calling them its “treasured sword”.
Pyongyang was making a spate of gestures because it was feeling the pressure from a summit between US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping this month, said Cho Bong-hyun, an expert on the North’s economy at the IBK Economic Institute in Seoul.
Both leaders agreed Pyongyang had to denuclearise.
“More substantively, the North is faced with the task of having to make an image change in order to draw foreign investment, a large part of which will have to come from China,” Cho said.
Late last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent a senior envoy to Beijing.
According to a source with knowledge of that visit, Chinese officials told the envoy that Beijing wanted an end to the North’s nuclear and missile tests.
North Korea also remains unpredictable, despite appearing to want to talk.
REUTERS
