Top US State Department Korean specialist to travel to NKorea for nuclear talks

WASHINGTON - A top State Department specialist on Korean affairs will travel this week to North Korea for nuclear discussions, the United States said Tuesday, in a flurry of diplomatic activity by U.S. officials working to break an impasse in six-nation disarmament negotiations.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that Sung Kim was to leave Washington on Tuesday and was scheduled to have meetings in Pyongyang, the North's capital, on Thursday. He called the meetings part of ongoing discussions to rid the North of its nuclear weapons programs.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations, said that Kim is expected to pick up documents from the North Koreans, including some related to the country's plutonium program.

Kim's visit comes as Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, the second-ranking U.S. diplomat, visits South Korea, Japan and China for meetings that will touch on the six-party talks. A team of five U.S. officials also is in North Korea for discussions on providing food aid as the North faces significant shortages.

Kim visited North Korea in late April and met with the head of North Korea's delegation to the disarmament talks, which have been stalled since last year over what Pyongyang will include in a promised declaration of its nuclear programs.

McCormack said the U.S. hopes the North will "produce a declaration in a short span of time. We're way past what was expected."

Asked about the stepped-up U.S. travel to the region, he said: "We are serious about trying to exert every diplomatic effort we can to help the six-party talks move forward; we're ready to meet our responsibilities, but this is a process that is by no means inevitable. North Korea has obligations that it needs to meet."

The U.S. says the North missed a year-end deadline to complete the declaration it had agreed to provide to the other countries in the negotiations: South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

The U.S. has recently stepped back from its demand for a detailed declaration addressing North Korea's alleged secret uranium enrichment program and nuclear cooperation with Syria; North Korea has denied those allegations. Washington now says it wants North Korea to simply acknowledge the concerns and set up a system to verify that the country does not conduct such activities in the future.

The U.S. food delegation will be in Pyongyang for an undetermined amount of time trying to reach agreement over how to guarantee that U.S. food can be distributed to North Koreans most in need, the State Department said.

A kilogram (2.2 pounds) of rice in Pyongyang now costs about a third of a typical worker's monthly income of about $2 (euro1.29), the U.N. food agency said. In another blow to the food situation, direct aid from North Korea's two top donors — China and South Korea — is also expected to decline this year.

Since the 1990s, North Korea has suffered regular food shortages caused by natural disasters, mismanagement and the loss of the country's Soviet benefactor. As many as 2 million people are believed to have died from famine.

Nancy Beck, a State Department spokeswoman, said the U.S. is "deeply concerned about the needs of the North Korean people."

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Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.