Seoul - U.S. Ambassador and MDP Head to Meet over Hillary's Visit to Pyongyang, North Korea

Yonhap News (South Korea) ^ | March 6, 2005

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U.S. Ambassador and MDP Head to Meet over Hillary's Visit to Pyongyang

SEOUL, March 6 (Yonhap) -- The head of South Korea's minor opposition Millennium Democratic Party plans to meet U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Christopher Hill this week over a possible visit to North Korea by a group of U.S. senators, including Hillary Clinton, party officials said Sunday.

Hill has requested the meeting with Han Hwa-kap scheduled for Monday at the party's head office in Seoul, they said.

Hill was named last week to become an assistant secretary of state handling Asian affairs, a job that will double him to serve as the chief U.S. nuclear negotiator with North Korea.

Han is pushing to visit North Korea along with U.S. congress members later this year for talks with the communist country's leader, Kim Jong-il, on the ongoing nuclear tension on the Korean Peninsula, the officials said.

Han, who heads the Asian part of the Asia-U.S. Network, a forum of lawmakers from both continents, said earlier this year that he has sent invitations to five U.S. congressmen, including Republican senators Conrad Burns of Montana and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, to visit North Korea.

Han also noted that the New York senator, Clinton, wished to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il personally to discuss the ongoing nuclear standoff. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had actively pushed rapprochement with the North's regime in the final months of his Administration.

"We understand that the U.S. Congress and administration strongly support Sen. Hillary Clinton's North Korea visit," an aide to the Korean opposition leader said, requesting anonymity.

The United States and South Korea have met in three rounds of talks that also involve Japan, China, Russia and the North to bring a peaceful end to the 29-month dispute over the North's nuclear weapons program.

The countries have been unable to convene the next round, since the North refused to attend a scheduled meeting in September, citing what it calls U.S. hostility toward Pyongyang.

The situation has also worsened recently, following a series of announcements by Pyongyang that it now has atomic weapons and would boycott future disarmament talks and resume testing long-range missiles.

The North Korean leader, however, hinted at resuming the stalled dialogue by telling a visiting Chinese envoy last month that his country would return to the negotiating table if certain conditions are met.

[No Surrender No Retreat]

I wonder if that was after he finished the second cack pipe? The JAMF could not sing his way out from a wet paper bag. Just another klintoon (POS)