U.S. Special Representative for North Korea policy Stephen Bosworth and Special Envoy for the Six Party Talks Ambassador Sung Kim are travelling to Beijing today, Wednesday, at the start of planned discussions with other members of the talks on recent developments.
State Department Spokesman Robert Wood, in a press briefing on the 5th, announced the delegation’s itinerary, confirming that there are no plans to visit Pyongyang.
The delegation will arrive in Beijing Thursday, before moving to Seoul on Friday, then Tokyo and Moscow in the first half of next week.
Wood asserted that the purpose of the trip is “to work with our allies to find a way forward in convincing the North to come back to the negotiating table,” instead of discussing punitive sanctions against the regime for its recent behavior. According to Wood, the U.S. believes the Six Party Talks framework is “viable” and that North Korea has “some obligations” under that framework to which it should be held.
However, the statement is somewhat at odds with the recent words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which appeared to suggest less confidence in the six-party framework. She told a Senate hearing last week that it was “implausible, if not impossible” that the North would return to the Talks.
North Korea officially withdrew from the talks after recent sanctions were placed on three North Korean companies as a consequence of the missile test of April 5th.
