China to Get N. Korea Proposal

The United States, Japan and South Korea have worked out a joint proposal on how to ease tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and will ask China to relay it to the North’s leaders, a senior South Korean official said Saturday.

If Pyongyang accepts the proposal, a second round of six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis will convene in Beijing, Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo Hyuck told South Korean reporters upon returning home from a trip to Washington.

Ahead of the Washington talks, South Korean officials said the proposal would deal with a key sticking point: When the United States should give written security assurances to North Korea. The North wants Washington to issue the assurances simultaneously with renunciation by the North of its nuclear weapons program; the United States wants the North to move first.

“The three countries have reached an understanding on the wording of a joint statement and agreed to give it to China,” Lee said. “China will send it to Pyongyang and then there will be a response.

“The next few days are crucial. I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic,” he said.

He did not give details on the proposal, drawn up in talks with his Japanese counterpart, Mitoji Yabunaka, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly. The three are their countries’ top negotiators at the nuclear talks, which also include China and Russia.

The six-nation talks had been expected to convene in Beijing on Dec. 17. But officials in Washington and Seoul indicated that they might be delayed.