THE TELEGRAPH: President Barack Obama has approved plans for the US to start direct talks with both North Korea and Iran, in a significant shift in policy.
The State Department said it would meet one-to-one with Pyongyang negotiators in an effort to persuade the reclusive Stalinist state to return to multilateral talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons programme.
Washington has also accepted a vague Iranian offer of talks on broad national security issues, even though Tehran refused to discuss its illicit atomic operations.
The US insisted it would raise Iranian’s nuclear activities in the meeting. "This may not have been a topic that they wanted to be brought up but I can assure that it's a topic that we'll bring up," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.
The new approach to two regimes shunned by the previous Bush administration as rogue states from the so-called "axis of evil" marks a significant change in American diplomacy.
It is certain to come under fresh attack from prominent conservatives and national security hawks such as former vice-president Dick Cheney.
They are resolutely opposed to what they see as "rewarding" hostile nations for their nuclear belligerence by agreeing to talks.
The North Korea gambit comes just a week after Pyongyang declared that it was close to being able to enrich uranium, a development that would give the outlaw regime a potential second means of building nuclear weapons.
Until now, the US has insisted it would only speak directly to North Korea if it had already agreed to re-join the six-party talks. South Korea said yesterday that it would back a US-North Korea meeting if the goal was to kick-start the stalled six-party talks.
The strategy is a risky one, however. The North has long wanted to engage America in direct and wide-ranging talks over its nuclear ambitions while the US insists any one-to-one contact would be focussed on pushing Pyongyang back into multilateral negotiations over its atomic projects.
The regime has also long proven itself to be an unreliable partner, reneging on deals during the administrations of Mr Obama's two predecessors, George W Bush, a Republican, and Bill Clinton, the last Democrat in the White House. >>> Philip Sherwell in New York and David Eimer in Beijing | Saturday, September 12, 2009
