North Korean Soldiers
‘Six party talks’ is the name given to the multilateral negotiations of six nations, US, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and North Korea to dismantle the North Korean Nuclear programme. North Korea and South Korea borders are an active conflict zone like Iraq, Afghanistan, India-Pakistan, Arab-Israel and Syria. These talks highlight the conflict between the US and North Korea, the closeness of North Korea to China and the nexus between North Korean arms sales to Pakistan.
In 1994 North Korea had agreed to freeze its nuclear programme in exchange for energy aid including two light water reactors. This was through bilateral agreements with the US. Japan. the EU and South Korea were involved in the implementation even though they were not in the initial agreement talks.
After that six rounds of talks have taken place since 2003 and at one stage North Korea agreed to give up its plans, but perhaps didn’t see any reciprocation from the other side.There were conditions such as non aggression, no nuclear weapons in the Korean peninsula. For some reason or the other the talks have not been able to produce the results it set out to.
I feel China is a key player in the talks and is like a firewall to North Korea, filtering and monitoring the talks. They have found a role in being the facilitators of the talks and North Korea ha laid down one of the conditons that the talks are to be held in Beijing.
Article linked below talks of North Korea wants the talks to be resumed.
Chinese checkers?
