By Shannon Tiezzi
Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S.still wants concrete commitments from Pyongyang before talks resume.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry indicated on Wednesday that the U.S. was hoping for a resumption of the long-stalled Six Party Talks. The talks, which brought together representatives from China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Russia, and the U.S., began in 2003 with the aim of negotiating an end to North Korea’s nuclear program. Talks were formally discontinued in 2009.
Kerry made the remarks during a joint press conference with the German foreign minister. Kerry was asked about the recent release of U.S. citizen Jeffrey Fowle, who had been held in North Korea for five months. That question led to a broader discussion of the North Korea issue. “We hope to get back to talks,” Kerry said, noting that the U.S. has “raised this issue with the Chinese, with the Russians, with others.” After this active diplomacy, Kerry held out hope that the talks might resume after a five-year hiatus. “We hope,” Kerry said, “that the dynamics can develop in the next weeks, months perhaps, where we could get back to talks. And the United States is absolutely prepared to do that.”
With regards to China in particular, Kerry said that the North Korean issue took up a lot of time during his recent talks with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi. “We had long talks about North Korea, the commitment of China and the rest of the … five parties to the denuclearization of the peninsula and the denuclearization of the regime,” Kerry said. Kerry also lauded China for “additional measures” taken in the last year “to try to send a very clear message to the North Koreans that [the continued development of a nuclear program] is unacceptable to the Chinese.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat