North Korea seen slowly warming to talks again

[TomCADem]

Source: Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - North Korea appears to be more open to resuming six-nation talks on its nuclear program, U.S. academics and former officials said on Friday after meeting Ri Gun, Pyongyang's second-ranking nuclear negotiator.

No current State Department officials were at the meeting, but Ri led a North Korean delegation that held discussions the past week in New York and California with Sung Kim, U.S. special envoy to disarmament talks.

"We have heard and read comments coming from the DPRK (North Korea) side in various ways that suggest that there has been an uptick in North Korean interest in resuming bilateral and even multilateral dialogue," Evans Revere, president of the Korea Society and a former State Department official, told a news conference.

"And I think it is a fair general characterization of the discussions that took place today to say that we heard those themes, that interest expressed fairly clearly during the course of our meetings."


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE59U00K2...

[COLGATE4]

1. When are we going to learn

that this is a perpetual circle-jerk perpetuated by whomever is in power in N. Korea at the time. They warm to us - they reject us - they freeze us out = they threaten us - we respond by trying another set of talks - they "slowly warm to us", etc. etc. ad infinitum. Not saying that there is anything else we can reasonably do except play along, but the excited new flashes that they are "warming" irritate me.

[pampango]

2. Didn't the Chinese premier just "invite" Kim to visit Biejing for talks. Something tells me

that has something to do with North Korea's, at least temporary, interest openness to talks.

[JonQ]

3. They must have finished building

whatever they were working on and now need something from us.

The utter transparency of the motives behind their schizophrenic behavior would be hilarious if we weren't playing along with it.