Report: North Korea considers return to six-party talks on nuclear disarmament

Report: North Korea considers multilateral talks

BEIJING — North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, meeting Monday with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, has expressed the North’s willingness to hold multilateral dialogue, including six-party talks on nuclear disarmament, if its relations with the United States improve, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.

In April, North Korea declared its withdrawal from the six-party talks and in May, it conducted a second nuclear test.

Pyongyang said on Sept. 4 that it had nearly completed enriching uranium, giving it a new way of developing nuclear weapons in addition to its known plutonium-based program.

Wen’s three-day visit to North Korea ends Tuesday, Xinhua said.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Washington was aware of reports that North Korea would reconsider opening talks but said the United States had not yet gotten details of the meeting from the Chinese.

“We’ve seen those reports,” Kelly said. “We’ve talked to our Chinese partners in the six-party talks and we’re conducting close coordination with China and the other partners in the talks.

“We, of course, encourage any kind of dialogue that would help us lead to our ultimate goal that’s shared by all the partners in the six-party talks, which, is the complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”