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WASHINGTON: The new US envoy for North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, is due in Beijing on Tuesday, a US official said, amid efforts to revive the North Korean nuclear disarmament talks.
"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 visit as 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 programmes 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, who was 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.
In the last few weeks, North Korea has lashed out at South Korea's new government and vowed to go ahead with what US officials fear would amount to a test launch of a missile that could eventually carry a nuclear warhead.
North Korea has said it is making brisk preparations to launch what it calls an experimental communications satellite despite growing appeals around the world to call off its plans. - AFP/de
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