N.Korea, UN hold talks amid border tensions

NUKEWARS

US NKorea envoy due in Beijing on Tuesday
The new US envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, is due in Beijing on Tuesday, a US official said, amid efforts to revive the nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea. "Weather permitting, he departs for Beijing today (Monday)," Gordon Duguid, a State Department spokesman, told reporters following a heavy snowstorm in Washington. "He is scheduled to meet with senior officials in Beijing. He will then visit Tokyo and Seoul and will consult with Russian officials, who will travel separately to the region," Duguid said. In announcing Bosworth's first tour as the North Korea envoy, the US State Department said last Thursday that Bosworth would travel to Moscow in addition to Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul. Now, Duguid said, Russian officials will travel to Asia to meet with Bosworth, but he did not say where and when he would meet the Russians. Under a landmark deal in 2007 with the United States and its partners, North Korea agreed to scrap its weapons-grade nuclear programs in exchange for badly-needed energy aid. But diplomats from the United States, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan late last year hit a deadlock in the negotiations when their counterparts from North Korea balked at their demands for verifying disarmament. Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator on North Korean nuclear disarmament under president George W. Bush, said last week that Bosworth will also try to deter North Korea from test-firing a missile when he visits Asia. Pyongyang has said it is making brisk preparations to launch what it calls an experimental communications satellite. US officials fear it would amount to a test launch of a missile that could eventually carry a nuclear warhead. Duguid was non-committal when asked if the United States would back Japan in what Kyodo News said would be a push for a new UN resolution that would include extra sanctions if North Korea goes ahead with the launch. "The UN Security Council will decide what happens when their ... resolution is ... violated. We'll see what happens should there be a launch," Duguid told reporters.

by Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) March 2, 2009
Generals from North Korea and the US-led UN Command in South Korea met for talks Monday for the first time in almost seven years as tensions rise over Pyongyang's planned rocket launch.

Their meeting at Panmunjom, inside the frontier buffer zone, came two days after the communist North warned US troops to stop "provocations" in the area or face retaliation.

The United Nations Command said they discussed ways to ease tensions during the 32-minute meeting, which was requested by the North, and agreed to further talks.

It welcomed the dialogue, saying it could build trust.

Yonhap news agency said the North renewed its condemnation of a major joint US-South Korean military exercise due to start March 9. A UN Command spokesman declined to confirm the report.

Fears of a border clash have grown after the North scrapped peace accords with Seoul and warned of war. It is angry at South Korea's conservative leader Lee Myung-Bak, who scrapped his predecessors' policy of offering virtually unconditional aid to Pyongyang.

The North is also preparing to fire a rocket for what it calls a satellite launch, although Seoul and Washington say the real purpose is to test a missile which could theoretically reach Alaska.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also questioned the launch and called for "restraint".

"No one forbids anyone to launch satellites, but on the other hand, we must understand what kind of missile this is," Lavrov said.

Stephen Bosworth, the new US envoy on North Korea, was due in Beijing on Tuesday where he will meet "senior officials", a State Department spokesman said.

"He will then visit Tokyo and Seoul and will consult with Russian officials, who will travel separately to the region," said spokesman Gordon Duguid.

The South Korean and Japanese foreign ministers, Yu Myung-Hwan and Hirofumi Nakasone, spoke by telephone Monday.

They agreed a rocket launch for any reason would violate a UN resolution passed after the last missile test in 2006, Seoul's foreign ministry said.

A US-led UN force fought for South Korea in the 1950-53 war. The United States still stations 28,500 troops there to back up the South's 680,000-strong military against the North's 1.1 million-member armed forces.

A US aircraft carrier and 26,000 US troops, plus an undisclosed number of Seoul's troops, will take part in next week's annual drill. Seoul and Washington say it is purely defensive, but Pyongyang calls it a preparation for war.

"North Korea filed lengthy complaints against the plan to hold the... exercise and the situation involving the US military deployment on the Korean peninsula," Yonhap quoted a source as saying.

There was no tangible agreement on reducing tension, the source added.

A UN Command statement said that both sides "discussed measures to reduce tensions and introduce transparency" and agreed to hold more talks.

"The UNC welcomed this discussion with North Korea which holds the prospect for building trust and preventing misunderstandings between both sides," it quoted delegation chief, US Air Force Major General Johnny Weida, as saying.

On Saturday, the North's army accused US forces of "behaving arrogantly" inside the Demilitarised Zone, which extends for two kilometres (1.2 miles) on each side of the borderline.

The North, threatening an unspecified "resolute counter-action", said US military personnel had approached close to the borderline on 66 occasions this year.

South Korea's defence ministry said they had been engaged in "legitimate" monitoring in the South's side of the zone.

Unification Minister Hyun In-Taek again offered the North dialogue in a speech marking the 40th anniversary of the founding of his ministry, which handles cross-border relations.

But Pyongyang blasted "traitor Lee Myung-Bak" for refusing to honour summit pacts between the North and his predecessors.

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NUKEWARS

NKorea Warns Against Provocations As Missile Test Looms

Seoul (AFP) Feb 28, 2009
North Korea on Saturday warned US troops stationed in South Korea to stop "provocations" in the buffer zone dividing the two Koreas or face a "resolute counteraction."

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