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Olive Branch from N Korea ?

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  • Olive Branch from N Korea ?

    Is this olive branch from N Korea for real? If it is, what cause a change of heart?

    SKorean president meets NKorean delegation
    1 hr ago [AP] SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea's president met a high-level delegation from North Korea Sunday amid signs of warming ties on the divided peninsula. Relations between the Koreas have been largely frozen since conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office last year with a tougher line on the North amid the international standoff over its nuclear ambitions.

    However, there have been increasing signs of warming ties between the rival countries this month with the regime releasing a detained South Korean worker, and its announcement that it would allow the resumption of some joint projects.

    The North also dispatched the delegation of senior officials to pay respects after the death of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.

    On Sunday, Lee held talks with the North Korean delegation at his office, said a presidential Blue House official who spoke on condition of anonymity citing department policy. .....

    Yonhap news agency reported Saturday, without citing a source, that the North Koreans were expected to deliver a message from leader Kim Jong Il and outline Pyongyang's plan to release four South Korean fishermen seized in July. They would also convey the North's position on resuming official dialogue. ....

  • #2
    Originally posted by Merlin View Post
    Is this olive branch from N Korea for real? If it is, what cause a change of heart?

    SKorean president meets NKorean delegation
    Let me google that for you

    Sorry

    I dunno, Merlin but I could guess, no offence...

    Somebody around here is responsible for Let me google that for you, I love it! (Thank you!)

    So lame to recycle like this, but still...

    Sorry, Merlin, couldn't resist...

    Comment


    • #3
      This must be one of the most important outcomes of the Olive Branch from N Korea. A bilaterial talk.

      U.S. envoy plans nuclear talks with North in Sept
      25 Aug [JoongAng] WASHINGTON - The top U.S. official in charge of North Korea policy will travel to Pyongyang next month for the first bilateral nuclear negotiations between the two countries, a senior diplomatic source in Washington has told the JoongAng Ilbo.

      Stephen Bosworth, the Barack Obama administration’s special representative for North Korea policy, will head to Pyongyang at the North’s invitation, the source told the newspaper on Sunday, Washington time. Bosworth will be accompanied by Sung Kim, Washington’s point man for the six-nation nuclear talks, he added.

      The U.S. delegation will likely visit South Korea, China and Japan in early September and then head to the North, according to the source.

      The trip was to be announced officially in early September, immediately before their departure to Pyongyang, the diplomat added. ....
      Last edited by Merlin; 25 Aug 09,, 07:00.

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      • #4
        This report if true is very significant to indicate the North's change of attitude. Unlesss the North is playing a game of course.

        Reports: NKorea's Kim wants summit with SKorea
        1 day ago [AP] SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has sent word that he wants to hold a summit with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in the latest sign of easing tensions between the divided nations, news reports said Monday.

        Kim's envoy proposed the summit during a rare meeting Sunday, and Lee told the envoy that he would be open to a summit if it is discuss North Korea's nuclear program, the South's mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo daily reported, citing an unidentified government official.

        Another leading newspaper, the JoongAng Ilbo, carried a similar report.

        However, the South's presidential Blue House denied the reports, saying that Lee and the North's envoy had general discussions on improving relations between the two sides, but that nothing related to a summit was mentioned.

        North Korea has significantly softened its stance toward the South in recent weeks, freeing a South Korean worker held there for more than four months, lifting restrictions on border crossings and agreeing to resume suspended joint projects.

        The North's envoy, senior ruling Workers' Party official Kim Ki Nam, visited Seoul from Friday until Sunday, leading a four-member delegation to pay Pyongyang's official respect for late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. The team also included Pyongyang's spy chief, Kim Yang Gon. ....

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        • #5
          The world should pay heed to this and immediately give the North Koreans whatever they ask for. There might not be this window for negotiations ever again.

          If having a nuclear free North Korea is the number 1 priority, get it done then. I don't understand the whole "ignore them" mentality.

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          • #6
            Anyone who trusts North Korea to keep their word or not simply be gaming the system is a fool. As long as Kim is alive no agreement is worth the paper its printed on.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Mobbme View Post
              The world should pay heed to this and immediately give the North Koreans whatever they ask for. There might not be this window for negotiations ever again.

              If having a nuclear free North Korea is the number 1 priority, get it done then. I don't understand the whole "ignore them" mentality.
              *My friend the world had payed heed time and time again and that time has come to pass. The world is tired of bribes, unfufilled agreements and threats. It is the North which needs to pay heed thus she will be left far behind and sooner or later something will happen on the penninsula. But I strongly doubt it will benefit Kim and his regime or those he sells ballistic missle technology too such as Iran and Mynamar.;)
              Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

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              • #8
                Looks like Kim is a little more mentally ill than previously thought. Perhaps this is some kind of pre turnover of power to his son manuvering
                You know JJ, Him could do it....

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Dreadnought View Post
                  *My friend the world had payed heed time and time again and that time has come to pass. The world is tired of bribes, unfufilled agreements and threats. It is the North which needs to pay heed thus she will be left far behind and sooner or later something will happen on the penninsula. But I strongly doubt it will benefit Kim and his regime or those he sells ballistic missle technology too such as Iran and Mynamar.;)
                  Send the Terminator, oh I mean the Governor of California there, he will get the job done once and for all ;)

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Kim throws this out to Obama. Catch 22.

                    Analysis: NKorea's talk offer a dilemma for Obama
                    2 hrs ago [AP] WASHINGTON — After being portrayed for years as a reclusive villain with nuclear ambitions, it's North Korea that wants to talk. And it's the Obama administration — champion of engaging adversaries — that does not.

                    By insisting that it will not deal one-on-one with the North Koreans until they return to international negotiations on nuclear disarmament, has the administration maneuvered its way into a diplomatic bind?

                    So it would seem.

                    "Clearly there is a little bit of tension in their current situation," said Bruce Bennett, a North Korea expert at the RAND Corp. think tank. He thinks the U.S. may have been outmaneuvered at this stage of a seesawing struggle that dates to 1992, when North and South Korea pledged to rid their peninsula of nuclear arms.

                    Since April, when North Korea abandoned the international negotiations known as the "six-party talks" with the U.S., South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, it has vowed to restart its nuclear weapons production, conducted an underground atomic test and promised to "wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all" if the United States resorts to military action.

                    Just this week, the North said it was ready to talk — but only with the Americans. The State Department quickly responded by saying it would talk, but only as part of the six-party format.

                    The picture began to shift early this month when former President Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who agreed to free two U.S. journalists detained in the North.

                    The question now is how President Barack Obama will slip out of the predicament to regain the upper hand and take advantage of North Korea's new interest in talks.

                    One possibility, in Bennett's view, would be a U.S. decision to send its special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang for one-on-one talks as part of a broader consultation that would include separate visits to Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo and Moscow — the other players in the six-party approach.

                    That would get around the North Koreans' refusal to participate directly in the six-party talks. But it's not clear whether the U.S. partners — especially South Korea and Japan — would go along. The partners thus far have publicly expressed no willingness to let the U.S. bypass the six-party talks.

                    At stake is Obama's standing on the world stage, important at a time when he is juggling other high-priority national security problems like wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, trouble in Pakistan and the prospect of a showdown with Iran over its own alleged ambition to build a nuclear weapon.

                    An even more primary worry is the potential for a nuclear arms race in Asia. Many worry that if the North Koreans cannot be persuaded to irreversibly eliminate its nuclear program, Japan and perhaps South Korea might feel compelled to use their technical abilities to develop nuclear programs as a counterweight to the North.

                    That is one of the key reasons the Obama administration believes it cannot accept North Korea's offer to hold talks that do not include South Korea and Japan as well as former close North Korean allies China and Russia. That six-party format was started in 2003 to broaden the pressure against the North. ....
                    Last edited by Merlin; 28 Aug 09,, 06:18.

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                    • #11
                      The ball is in Obama's court.

                      The US has offered this compromise last time. Agree to a one-to-one talk with N Korea at the side-line of a six-party talk.

                      Thus they can return this compromise ball to the N Korea court and can then wait for them to return.
                      Last edited by Merlin; 30 Aug 09,, 02:50.

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                      • #12
                        Five N Korea officials are in LA to talk about resuming food aid. Only five months ago they turned it down during a standoff.

                        N.Koreans' quiet food aid trip to US
                        2 days ago [AFP] WASHINGTON — North Korean officials quietly visited Los Angeles last week to talk about resuming food aid, which the impoverished state cut off five months ago during a standoff, participants have said.

                        The move comes as tensions gradually ease with North Korea, which stunned the world by conducting a nuclear test earlier this year but in recent weeks has made overtures for dialogue.

                        Five North Korean officials received special US permission to visit Los Angeles where they met representatives of non-governmental organizations that provide relief worldwide, according to the groups.

                        Richard Walden, president of Operation USA, said the charity picked up the North Koreans at the airport as a goodwill gesture and took them on a tour of its warehouse stocked with medicine and medical equipment to be sent overseas. ....

                        Walden said the North Koreans' three-day trip came about after former president Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang on August 4 to free two US journalists.

                        The delegation, which also met with other relief groups, included four members of the Korea-US Private Exchange Society, the North Korean body charged with handling relief goods from US non-governmental organizations.

                        A fifth delegation member came from North Korea's mission at the United Nations and received special permission to travel beyond the New York area, Walden said. .....

                        North Korea suffers chronic hunger problems, with hundreds of thousands dying in famine in the 1990s.

                        But the communist regime -- which prides itself on the philosophy of "juche," or self-reliance -- in March booted out five US non-governmental organizations. ....
                        Last edited by Merlin; 31 Aug 09,, 02:12.

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Merlin View Post
                          ... The US has offered this compromise last time. Agree to a one-to-one talk with N Korea at the side-line of a six-party talk. ...
                          This is still the stand of the US. So the ball is now back in N Korea's court to see how it would respond.

                          I think N Korea would respond by saying just have a bilateral talk, no six-party talk.

                          US says open to NKorea talks within key framework
                          5 hrs ago [AFP] TOKYO — The US envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, reiterated Tuesday that Washington was ready for bilateral talks with Pyongyang, but only as part of wider six-party denuclearisation talks. ...
                          Last edited by Merlin; 08 Sep 09,, 14:13.

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                          • #14
                            The US took some action by freezing the assets of two N Korea organisations.

                            North Korea extols "friendship" as U.S. presses sanctions
                            9 Sept SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea celebrated its founding on Wednesday by pledging to pursue friendly global relations and signaling it was still open to dialogue after Washington froze the assets of firms linked to its arms trade.

                            Analysts said destitute North Korea, hit by U.N. sanctions for a nuclear test in May, has been playing a tactical game with the international community by making a series of conciliatory gestures in August followed this month by a statement saying it had advanced in enriching uranium.

                            On the anniversary of the North's founding, leaders put aside their usual heated rhetoric directed at traditional adversaries South Korea and the United States. .....

                            Peter Beck, research fellow at Stanford University and a specialist in Korean affairs, said Pyongyang was trying to gain the upper hand by forcing regional powers to guess its intentions.....

                            North Korea claimed last week that it was running a program to enrich uranium for weapons, potentially giving it a new path to build nuclear arms as suspected by Washington.

                            ASSETS FREEZE
                            The United States moved on Tuesday to freeze the assets of two North Korean entities believed to be involved in its atomic and missile programs.

                            The State Department moved against its General Bureau of Atomic Energy, which oversees the nuclear program, and Korea Tangun Trading Corp, believed to support its missile programs. ...

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