China planned weekend talks with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) over the nuclear crisis amid US hopes that Beijing would bring new pressure on Pyongyang to rejoin negotiations, official sources said on Wednesday.  

The DPRK shocked the world last Thursday by declaring it had made nuclear weapons and was suspending participation in the six-way talks on the crisis, which also bring together the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan, the United States, China and Russia.

A Tokyo-based diplomatic source said Wang Jiarui, head of the Chinese Communist Party's International Liaison Department, would visit the DPRK from February 19 to 22.

Japanese, ROK and US officials would meet after that to discuss what steps to take next, the source added.

Japan's Kyodo News Service said that three-way meeting would take place in Seoul from Saturday to Tuesday.

Intensifying diplomacy

In a sign of intensifying diplomacy, the new top US negotiator on the six-party talks, Chris Hill, as well as ROK Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, planned to visit Beijing on Thursday for consultations before Wang's trip.

Hill, also US ambassador to Seoul, "is an activist. This (Beijing visit) is part of an all-out effort to get this negotiating process up and running," a US official said.

After President George W. Bush began his second term in January, US officials expected Pyongyang to agree to a new round of six-party talks. Since the DPRK's statement last week, US officials have sought to play down any sense of rising crisis.

CIA Director Porter Goss, testifying before a US Senate committee on Wednesday, called the DPRK's statement "bluster diplomacy" and another attempt to exploit "nothing to get something."

The ROK appeared to rebuff the idea of increasing pressure on Pyongyang during high-level talks in Washington earlier this week.

The United States would like the ROK to withhold a fertilizer shipment to Pyongyang but Seoul's response has been ambiguous, one US official said.

He said Hill's message to China would be: "We're prepared to talk. Let's get them back to the table. There's no excuse for this delay."

China's new leaders face a tough diplomatic challenge in seeking to persuade the DPRK to return to the table and resolve the crisis, which emerged in 2002.

Diplomatic experts have said persistent refusal by the DPRK to return to the talks would prompt the United States and its allies to insist on taking up the matter at the UN Security Council, a prelude to possible economic sanctions.

The nuclear standoff began in October 2002 when Washington said the DPRK admitted to a secret program to enrich weapons-grade uranium in violation of a 1994 accord. Pyongyang has since insisted it only has a plutonium program.

(Chinadaily.com.cn via agencies, February 17, 2005)