MOSCOW, October 27 (RIA Novosti) — The US special envoy for the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions arrived in Seoul Monday for an international conference on a regional peace initiative proposed by South Korean President Park Geun-hye in the hope of the resumption of negotiations, Yonhap news agency reported.
The talks will be centered on ways to "continue to pursue our six-party talks diplomacy and work together to create conditions necessary for resuming the talks and coordinate across the board our North Korean policy," Yonhap quoted Sydney Seiler as saying upon his arrival.
Seiler is scheduled to hold talks with his counterpart Shin Chae-hyun, director general of North Korea's nuclear affairs, after which he will attend the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Forum on Tuesday, according to the news agency.
Park's initiative, to be discussed at the forum, is aimed at promoting peace by gradually building trust among participants in the talks. The forum is to begin with nonpolitical issues such as environment and disaster management, before getting into security and political concerns.
The talks involving the United States, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, were launched in 2003 aiming to dismantle Pyongyang's nuclear program. However negotiations stalled when North Korea announced that it was reversing disablement actions and said it would restart its reprocessing plant in 2008.
The visit marks Seiler's second visit to Seoul since his appointment in September. According to the US State Department, he is also scheduled to visit China on Thursday and Japan on Saturday, in a bid to revive the six-party negotiations.
