Foreign ministers of two Koreas hold meetings to explore possible resumption of dialogue


South Korea, the United States and Japan called on North Korea on Saturday to take action to dismantle its nuclear program before the resumption of six-party talks.

In a joint statement after the trilateral meeting on the sidelines of Asia’s largest security forum in Indonesia, South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto welcomed rare inter-Korean talks that took place in Bali a day earlier, news reports said.

On Friday, the two Koreas held informal talks between South Korean chief nuclear negotiator Wi Sung-lac and his newly appointed North Korean counterpart Ri Yong-ho. The inter-Korean meeting was the first of its kind in two-and-a-half years.

The three ministers “welcomed the inter-Korean dialogue on denuclearization held in Bali on Friday and “emphasized that the inter-Korean dialogue should be a sustained process going forward,” Yonhap news agency quoted the statement as saying.

They also agreed to continue efforts to dissuade North Korea from taking provocative actions and to encourage North Korea to take concrete steps to demonstrate a genuine commitment to denuclearization,” the statement said.

Earlier on Saturday, Clinton said that she was “encouraged” by surprise talks between North and South Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear program, but urged the North to show sincerity.

“We are encouraged by the recent North-South meeting that took place on the margins of the ASEAN Regional Forum, but we remain firm that in order for six-party talks to resume, North Korea must take steps to improve North-South relations,” she said in prepared remarks, AFP reported.

In the joint statement, the three countries said Pyongyang must “address” its secretive uranium enrichment program before the talks, stalled since December 2008, could re-start.

“The ministers ... agreed that North Korea’s uranium enrichment program must also be addressed in order to allow for the resumption of the six-party talks,” they said.

The six-party talks involve the two Koreas, China, the United States, Japan and Russia, and are aimed at getting the North to abandon its nuclear program in return for economic assistance.

In an apparent attempt to keep the dialogue momentum going, Kim held a series of brief, informal meetings with his North Korean counterpart Pak Ui-chun on Saturday.

“During the brief meeting with Pak, I think that we built significant common understanding on joint efforts for denuclearization dialogue,” Kim told reporters, Yonhap said.

It was also the first time that top diplomats from the two Koreas met since a meeting at an ASEAN forum in July 2008 in Singapore.

Pyongyang walked from the six-nation talks in 2008, claiming other dialogue partners had failed to keep their side of the promise and conducted a second nuclear test shortly afterward.

South Korea and the regional powers are pushing to resume the six-party dialogue in a three-step approach which calls for North Korea to meet with South Korea first and then with the U.S. for one-on-one talks before the full-scale six-way process can start.

At the end of the ASEAN Regional Forum on Saturday, top diplomats from 26 countries and the European Union “welcomed” the rare inter-Korean meeting between the chief nuclear envoys and hoped that the inter-Korean dialogue would continue.

From news reports