DPRK chief negotiator Kim Kye-gwan is in New York
Sunday to attend normalization talks with the U.S..(Xinhua/Reuters
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NEW
YORK, Mar. 5 (Xinhua) -- Representatives from the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea (DPRK) and the United States on Monday had a working dinner at a local
hotel at the start of talks aimed at implementing an agreement that includes
steps toward normalizing bilateral relations.
DPRK Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan,
the highest-ranking DPRK official to visit the U.S. since 2000, and U.S.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill will hold full talks on Tuesday.
Hill arrived at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in a taxi to
avoid the media attention. Kim arrived in a limousine. Neither spoke to
reporters.
Though some hailed the Kim-Hill talks as historic,
U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack played down expectations of any
immediate breakthrough.
"I would expect that it ... would take some time in
order for that process to be completed," McCormack told reporters in Washington
earlier Monday.
"It would be a matter of building up trust, it would
be a matter of performance and today is just an initial discussion," McCormack
said.
On Monday morning, Kim visited the Korea Society and
stayed there for almost five hours with several U.S. nuclear and Korea experts
and former officials, including former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and
Madeleine Albright.
According to a statement issued after the meeting,
which was sponsored by the Korea Society and the National Committee on American
Foreign Policy, participants discussed a range of bilateral issues between the
United States and the DPRK in a friendly and forthcoming atmosphere.
The participants agreed that continuing dialogue of
this nature can be helpful in laying the foundation for improved official
relations to be established through forthcoming negotiations, the statement
said.
Meanwhile, it was reported by South Korea's Yonhap
news agency that Kim met South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator Chun Yung-woo
during the past weekend.
Chun told reporters that "without a doubt, the North
(DPRK) is committed to taking initial steps" to implement its commitment in the
recent agreement to start dismantling its nuclear weapons program.
The long-expected bilateral talks follow the
six-party talks, involving China, the DPRK, the United States, South Korea,
Japan and Russia, that ended in Beijing on Feb. 13, 2007, with a joint statement
on the first step toward the denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.
Under the document, the DPRK will shut down and seal
the Yongbyon nuclear facility, including the reprocessing facility and invite
back IAEA personnel to conduct all necessary monitoring and verifications.
In addition, the parties also agreed to the provision
of emergency energy assistance to the DPRK in the initial phase, and the
assistance equivalent to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil will commence within 60
days.
The normalization talks between the U.S. and the DPRK
occurs at a time when Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic
Energy Agency, prepares to visit Pyongyang on March 13 to discuss how to monitor
its promised dismantling of nuclear facilities.
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