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U.S. confirms delegation to North Korea
From CNN State Department Correspondent Andrea Koppel and Producer Christy Brennan
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House has announced a State Department delegation will leave Washington next week on a trip that will eventually take the group to North Korea to discuss a broad range of issues. James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Jack Pritchard, special U.S. envoy for Korean affairs; and other administration officials will leave Monday but are not expected to arrive in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang until October 3, according to a statement from White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Before proceeding to Pyongyang, the delegation will hold consultations with U.S. allies South Korea and Japan. "Consistent with the president's stated willingness to explore comprehensive dialogue with North Korea and based on close coordination with South Korea and Japan, Assistant Secretary Kelly will explain U.S. policy and seek progress on a range of issues of long-standing concern to the United States and the international community," Fleischer's statement said. The U.S. delegation is expected to spend about a week in North Korea discussing issues ranging from North Korea's suspected weapons of mass destruction program, the 1994 agreed framework, conventional forces on the Korean peninsula and the dire humanitarian situation in that country. Wednesday, Fleischer announced President George W.Bush called Kim Dae-jung, the South Korean leader, and informed him that the White House would "at an early date" send an envoy to the North. In a February 2002 visit to South Korea, the president offered to reopen talks with North Korea, after opting not to negotiate with Pyongyang early in his administration. Tensions between the United States and the communist country reached a low when, in his January State of the Union address, Bush named North Korea, Iran and Iraq an "axis of evil." North Korea originally rejected President Bush's offer to discuss several issues, after the president continued his hardline stance while on the Korean Peninsula. He used the word "evil" again in reference to the country during a tour of the Korean DMZ and condemned it as a nation that "is not transparent, that allows for starvation, that develops weapons of mass destruction" in a press conference in Seoul. But in the following months, relations began to thaw. The United States first proposed sending Kelly in June, then changed its mind after North Korea killed several South Koreans after firing on a naval vessel. Yet North Korea surprised the world by expressing regret for the incident. In July relations thawed further. Secretary of State Colin Powell had a surprise meeting with his North Korean counterpart at an ASEAN meeting in Brunei, and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov announced after meeting with Kim Jong il that North Korea was ready to begin talks with Washington and Japan. This month, North Korea admitted to Japan that it had kidnapped at least 12 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to train North Korean spies.
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