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Nuclear issue: New proposal to resolve crisis

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE April 25. The three-way talks on the North Korean nuclear issue ended in Beijing today on a quiet diplomatic note that was not indicative of any definitive progress or failure.

The talks, involving the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or the North), the U.S. and China, were conducted for three days at Beijing's initiative. While James Kelly headed the U.S. delegation to these parleys, the DPRK was represented by Ri Gun and China by Fu Ying.

A senior DPRK functionary, Myong Rok, had held talks with the Chinese leaders in Beijing ahead of the "tripartite'' meeting. Without confirming or even contradicting the diplomatic indications that North Korea had now firmly acknowledged that it had produced or acquired nuclear weapons, the United States underlined that it would not come as a surprise to the international community if Pyongyang were indeed holding nuclear weapons in its arsenal. The U.S. maintained, too, that it had in fact spoken for several years about definitive indications that the DPRK was having nuclear weapons.

At the conclusion of this round of dialogue, the DPRK said its delegation had now made "a new proposal'' for the resolution of the current crisis over the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula. This was the farthest that Pyongyang was prepared to go in hinting that it might have actually confirmed its possession of atomic weapons at this stage. No details of the "new proposal'' were hinted at by the DPRK.

While the U.S. noted that it would analyse the substantive dialogue that took place in Beijing, a question that was left unanswered by all the three parties pertained to the next step on this new diplomatic avenue. As the host to the talks, China had all along stressed, during the discussions, that the Korean peninsula should be free of nuclear weapons and that the DPRK nuclear issue should be resolved only through peaceful negotiations. ``China will continue to work to (achieve) this end'', the Chinese spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said in Beijing today at the conclusion of the talks.

The meeting ended with the leaders of the three delegations "clasping their hands''. The Chinese Foreign Minister, Li Zhaoxing, conveyed to the leaders of the other two delegations, at separate meetings with them today, that Beijing would strive for the goal of a non-nuclearised Korean peninsula. For the U.S., this was by far the most definitive statement by China in this regard at a relevant meeting designed to promote a settlement of this issue.

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