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| Sunday, 16 October 2005 |
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US governor to hold nuclear talks with North Korea SANTA FE, (AFP)- US politician Bill Richardson will visit North Korea next week for White House-backed talks aimed at persuading the communist state to abandon its nuclear weapons program, he said Friday. Former cabinet official Richardson, now Democratic governor of the southwestern state of New Mexico, will arrive in Pyongyang on Monday on an unofficial visit supported by the Republican administration intended to give momentum to recently-unfrozen contacts with North Korea. Richardson stressed that his three-day trip to bolster multi-nation talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear threat was unofficial but supported by the White House and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "The objective of the trip is to move the diplomatic process forward started by Secretary of State Rice's new initiative that has allowed for serious bilateral talks within the six party format," Richardson said in a statement. "I am not an official envoy, but I am supportive of the administration's new initiative to engage the North Koreans in dialogue through diplomacy," Richardson said. Deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Richardson consulted with the administration on the visit, was being provided an Air Force plane for the trip, and was expected to brief Washington officials on his return. But Ereli said, "He is not traveling as an official representative of the United States, and he is not carrying a message on behalf of the government of the United States." The trip comes after long-stalled six-party talks between North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States on scrapping the North's nuclear arsenal resumed in September after Washington engaged Pyongyang. At the talks, Pyongyang agreed to a statement of principles under which it would give up its atomic weapons in return for energy and security guarantees. But the enigmatic regime later warned it will not dismantle its nuclear arsenal until the United States delivers light-water reactors to allow it to generate power, leaving the prospect of prolonged multilateral wrangling. |
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