A senior administration official characterized the upcoming meeting as "exchanging views" rather than "negotiation." He added that there would be no substantive discussions until the governments of south Korea, Japan, and possibly Russia are involved in subsequent "multilateral" talks, which is Washington’s next objective.

The north Korean government has stated that Washington is responsible for the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. The U.S. military has 37,000 troops stationed in south Korea. Early this year it deployed two dozen heavy bombers to Guam, well within striking range of north Korea. Washington maintains another 48,000 troops in Japan. The nuclear-armed U.S. Seventh Fleet patrols the area waters, the U.S. armed forces regularly conduct military "exercises," including mock invasions of the north, with the 650,000-strong south Korean army.

Pyongyang denounced Washington’s demand for multilateral negotiations as an attempt to isolate the north. It has cited the declaration by U.S. president George Bush that north Korea is a point in an "axis of evil," along with Iraq and Iran, as amounting to an invasion threat. Pyongyang’s concerns have been heightened by Washington’s subsequent assault on Iraq and overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime.

At an April 9 meeting of the UN Security Council, Washington pressed for an official condemnation of north Korea, which would have paved the way for UN-sponsored sanctions against Pyongyang. In face of opposition to such a move by Beijing and Moscow, the council issued a milder statement expressing its "concern" about north Korea’s nuclear program. Calling that action "acceptable," Washington’s UN ambassador, John Negroponte, also expressed optimism that progress was being made towards holding multilateral talks.

The Bush administration has insisted on multilateral talks as a means to enlist the aid of Beijing, Moscow, and Seoul to apply greater pressure on north Korea to abandon its nuclear program. Underscoring Beijing’s central role in getting Pyongyang to accept a compromise, a senior Bush administration official said the White House decided to agree to the meeting because the Chinese government had taken "such a major role" in setting it up. He added that Beijing’s initiative came after "months of our telling them that they had to do more."

In reporting on the north Korean government’s decision to participate in the talks, Minju Joson, a Pyongyang daily, said that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) would not be stuck "to any particular dialogue format," in order to settle the current crisis.

Washington stepped up its actions and threats against the DPRK last October. In the ensuing controversy, the U.S. government halted shipments of oil to north Korea, an action followed by the governments of Japan and south Korea. The shipments were part of the 1994 Agreed Framework, under which the three governments also promised to assist in the construction of nuclear power reactors in north Korea of the kind that could not reprocess weapons-grade plutonium. In exchange, Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons program.

In response, the north Korean government announced last December that it would restart a small reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear power facility in order to produce badly-needed electricity. Washington claims that the facility can also reprocess enough plutonium to manufacture one nuclear bomb a year.

On the same day as the announcement of the planned three-way talks, Japan’s defense minister, Shigeru Ishiba, stated that Tokyo was interested in buying the latest-generation Patriot missiles from the United States in order to expand Tokyo’s missile defenses. North Korea has missiles capable of striking any point in Japan within 10 minutes of being launched. In January, Ishiba told the Japanese parliament that Tokyo would be justified in bombing north Korea’s missile sites if it threatened to attack Japan.  
 
UN commission joins anti-Korea chorus
The agreement for the trilateral talks also came as Washington and European Union governments guided a resolution through the UN Human Rights Commission accusing the north Korean government of "widespread and grave violations" of human rights. The resolution urges Pyongyang to give free access to UN "human rights inspectors," a condition that Washington has set for increasing food aid to the country.

Jong Song Li, north Korea’s representative to the commission meeting, refuted the accusations, calling the resolution "full of fabrications." This was the first time the United Nations had considered such a resolution against north Korea in that body’s 57-year existence.

The resolution was passed by a vote of 28 to 10. The south Korean government was among those abstaining.

Sentiment continues to grow in south Korea for unification of the peninsula. The country has been divided since the end of the 1950–53 Korean War, during which U.S.-led United Nations forces were pushed back by north Korean troops, backed by China, to a stalemate at the 38th parallel.

Anger at the pervasive U.S. military presence in south Korea exploded in mass protests last fall after two south Korean youths were killed by a U.S. military vehicle.

Seoul dispatched 20 military officers to Kuwait April 17 as an advance team of 650 "noncombat" engineers and medics that will join the U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq. There were widespread street protests in April when Seoul announced plans for the deployment. According to the Associated Press, a group of antiwar activists protested the officers’ departure at Inchon International Airport.
 
 
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