JAPAN: US ASSOSTANT SECRETARY OF STATE JAMES KELLY ARRIVES IN TOKYO FOR TALKS ON NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR ARMS PROGRAMME
Record ID:
222808
JAPAN: US ASSOSTANT SECRETARY OF STATE JAMES KELLY ARRIVES IN TOKYO FOR TALKS ON NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR ARMS PROGRAMME
- Title: JAPAN: US ASSOSTANT SECRETARY OF STATE JAMES KELLY ARRIVES IN TOKYO FOR TALKS ON NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR ARMS PROGRAMME
- Date: 29th September 2003
- Summary: (W4)TOKYO , JAPAN (SEPTEMBER 29, 2003) (REUTERS -ACCESS ALL) 1. SLV/SV CAR CARRYING US ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE JAMES KELLY ARRIVES AT CONFERENCE CENTRE/KELLY GETS OUT OF CAR 0.23 2. SV KELLY WALKS THROUGH THRONG OF REPORTERS AND ENTERS CONFERENCE CENTRE 0.41 3. SLV EXTERIOR OF CONFERENCE CENTRE 0.49 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 14th October 2003 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: TOKYO, JAPAN
- Country: Japan
- Reuters ID: LVA7EYTBHYSIYDAS0CHKWL76EVJG
- Story Text: US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly arrives
in Tokyo for talks on North Korea's nuclear arms programme
U.S., Japanese and South Korean diplomats gathered
in Tokyo on Monday (September 29, 2003) to discuss strategy
to deal with North Korea's nuclear arms programme,
including how to reassure Pyongyang over its security
concerns.
The talks are the first among senior diplomats from
Washington and its two key Asian allies since a largely
inconclusive round of six-way negotiations in Beijing in
August.
Those discussions ended with an agreement that tensions
over Pyongyang's nuclear programme should be resolved
pea
cefully, but no firm schedule was set for another round
of talks.
Washington wants North Korea to agree to a verifiable
and irreversible end to its nuclear programmes, including
production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for
nuclear fuel.
Pyongyang, for its part, wants firm assurances that the
United States will not attack or invade.
The six-way talks in Beijing brought together North and
South Korea, Russia, the United States, Japan and host
country China.
Participants in the Tokyo talks are U.S. Assistant
Secretary of State James Kelly, Mitoji Yabunaka, director
general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and
Oceanian Affairs Bureau, and South Korean Deputy Foreign
Minister Lee Soo-hyuck.
The main discussions were to take place on Tuesday
(September 30) following a private dinner on Monday,
Japanese government sources said.
Kelly, asked by reporters what he expected, would say
only: "A good exchange of views."
South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan said
earlier on Monday it seemed that North Korea was not
opposed to more talks but would cling to its nuclear arms
programme if the outside world sought to change its
communist system.
No schedule has been set for the next round.
The South Korean foreign minister said last week
that Washington was working out a detailed plan to deal
with the North Korean nuclear crisis, including ways to
ease the communist state's security concerns and ease its
economic hardship.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday
(September 27) that addressing those security concerns was
vital.
Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun daily said on Monday that
Japan would press the United States at the Tokyo talks to
state specific terms under which it would provide security
guarantees.
The three countries are also likely to discuss creating
an international inspection system to verify that North
Korea is dismantling its nuclear arms programme once it
says it is willing to do so, Kyodo news agency said.
U.S. government officials have said another such round
on the crisis, which emerged a year ago when Washington
said Pyongyang had admitted pursuing a secret nuclear arms
programme, was unlikely before November.
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