No breakthroughs on North Korea nukes

Ri Gun, the North Korean Foreign Ministry's chief expert on U.S. affairs, led a delegation that met behind closed doors with former U.S. ambassadors and other North Korea experts in San Diego on Monday and Tuesday and in New York on Friday. No U.S. officials attended Friday's meeting, though a State Department official did go to San Diego.

North Korea carried out nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests earlier this year, but North Korean leader Kim Jong Il recently said his country could rejoin international disarmament talks, depending on the status of direct talks with the U.S.

North Korea has a longstanding goal of drawing Washington into face-to-face dialogue and cutting other regional powers out of the talks.

The U.S. has said it is willing to hold direct talks with North Korea if it leads to resumption of the six-party talks aimed at halting the country's nuclear weapons programs. The talks would also involve South Korea, China, Russia and Japan.

For the San Diego meetings, the U.S. State Department sent Sung Kim, the U.S. special envoy to the now-suspended six-party talks.

Both sides also met last Saturday when the North Koreans arrived in New York.

However, no State Department representative attended the New York meetings on Friday, and State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters in Washington that no further meetings were scheduled between U.S. officials and the North Koreans.

At a news conference Friday following the conclusion of the New York talks, Winston Lord, a former U.S. ambassador to China and assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said “nobody pulled any punches” in the private talks.

But “the mood was much better than we've seen in months,” Lord said.

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