N’Korea nuclear chief meets US negotiators

United States academics and former senior officials met North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator in Singapore on Sunday, to get a feel for each other’s positions amid a years-long standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons buildup, The UK Guardian reports.

Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council, a US-based nonprofit, told reporters the meeting would cover the North’s nuclear missile programmes. He said “it’s two ways of taking each other’s temperature”.

The US and North Korea have no formal diplomatic ties, but former US officials occasionally meet the North’s diplomats in a bid to settle the impasse over Pyongyang’s pursuit of a long-range nuclear-armed missile that could hit the US mainland.

North Korea’s team was led by Ri Yong Ho, the chief negotiator for six-party denuclearisation talks. North Korea has indicated willingness to rejoin the long-stalled talks, but has balked at US demands it first take concrete steps to show it remains committed to the denuclearisation goal.

Earlier this month, North Korea told the US that it was willing to impose a temporary moratorium on its nuclear tests if Washington scraps planned military drills with South Korea this year. Washington called the linking of the military drills with a possible nuclear test “an implicit threat”, but said it was open to dialogue with North Korea.

Pyongyang is thought to have a handful of crude nuclear bombs and has conducted three nuclear tests since 2006. But experts are divided on how far the opaque government has come in the technology needed to miniaturize a warhead.

Asked whether the two sides would also discuss recent hacking attacks linked to the comedy flick “The Interview,” Sigal said, “I don’t think we will get into that very much.”

Eclussive from PUNCH online.