China’s foreign minister is pushing for the restart of international talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, saying that Pyongyang is ready to recommit to the goal of denuclearisation.
North Korea withdrew from the aid-for-disarmament talks in 2009, and over the past year has made clear it wants to be treated as a nuclear weapons state.
But Foreign Minister Wang Yi said yesterday that North has recently said it is ready to come back to a 2005 commitment on giving up nuclear weapons, and to an agreement it reached with the United States in February last year on freezing its nuclear programs in exchange for food aid.
That agreement fell through soon after it was hatched because North Korea tested a long-range rocket. The US remains very skeptical about Pyongyang’s intentions.