Seoul not hopeful on North Korea-US talks
Posted: 29 November 2009 1349 hrs

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SEOUL: South Korea sees prospects for a US-North Korean meeting next month as "dark" because Pyongyang has yet to promise to return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks, a news report said Sunday.

Stephen Bosworth, US special representative for North Korean policy, is scheduled to visit the communist state on December 8 with an aim to persuading it to return to six-party nuclear disarmament negotiations.

"There is no confirmed signal that North Korea will return to six-party talks," an unidentified senior Seoul government official told a group of local reporters Sunday, according to Yonhap news agency.

"At the moment, we must say the prospects are dark."

Officials at Seoul's foreign ministry were not immediately available for comment.

North Korea quit the six-party talks in April and tested a second atomic weapon in May. Its leader Kim Jong-Il said last month he was ready to return to the talks, but only if bilateral discussions with the United States are satisfactory.

The six-nation talks, which began more than six years ago, group the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.

Bosworth will come to South Korea on a commercial flight and then travel on a military aircraft to Pyongyang via a US air base in Osan, south of Seoul, according to the unnamed Seoul official.

The US envoy is unlikely to bring a letter from US President Barack Obama for Pyongyang or meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il during his trip, the official said.

Japan's Kyodo news agency earlier this month quoted a US State Department official as saying Bosworth will brief officials in Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul and Moscow on the results of his trip to Pyongyang afterwards.

- AFP/yb