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South Korea and the U.S. on Monday reaffirmed that six-nation talks on denuclearization of North Korea will continue. Kim Sook, the newly appointed South Korean envoy to the talks, met his U.S. counterpart Christopher Hill in Washington D.C., and the two agreed to resume the talks soon and put priority on the plutonium extracted from the Yongbyon nuclear reactor.
After the meeting, Kim paid a compliment to the effort made by Sung Kim, Director of the Korean affairs desk at the U.S. State Department, who visited Pyongyang last week to negotiate with the communist country. The South Korean chief delegate added that this issue will require an ongoing consultation. "We discussed various aspects of the six-party process... what we would expect to see as we continue on this process," said Hill. He continued that ¡°as the North Koreans complete all of their requirements, all of their obligations, we will certainly complete ours."
This is the first visit to the U.S. by Kim Sook since he was appointed as the new head of the South Korean delegation. He also met with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A high-ranking official in the government said that there is a possibility that the six-party talks would resume at the end of May, as North Korea seems willing to fulfill its second-phase obligations, and the U.S. is positively inclined at least in the short term.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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