US, North Korea hold secret talks

A group of former US diplomats held closed door talks at the weekend with senior Pyongyang officials even as international efforts gather pace to further isolate N. Korea, diplomatically and economically.

The two-day meet in Kuala Lumpur, confirmed by the South Korean and US governments, was the latest in a series of unofficial talks referred to as Track 2 that are closely monitored in the absence of any official contact between Washington and Pyongyang.

In July, N. Korea cut off its only remaining official channel of diplomatic communications with the US in retaliation for American sanctions against its leader, Kim Jong-Un. The ‘New York channel’ had previously served as a key point of contact between N. Korean and US diplomats at the UN.

American participants at the talks included Robert Gallucci who had led the US team that brokered a 1994 deal with Pyongyang on freezing its nuclear weapons programme. On the North Korean side was vice foreign minister Han Song-Ryol who previously served as deputy ambassador to the UN.

The meet came after N. Korea on Thursday test-fired a powerful new medium-range missile.

Leon Sigal, an academic specialising in the Koreas who attended the talks, said the N. Korea’s nuclear weapons programme had dominated the discussion. Mr Sigal told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency that the N. Korea stressed on the need to sign a peace treaty with the US before moving on its weapons programme. The US side said the move to scrap the nuclear programme had to come first.