US likely to send envoy to Pyongyang: official

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States is likely to decide soon to send an envoy to North Korea, the first such mission by President Barack Obama's administration to jumpstart denuclearization talks, an official has said.

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Monday the announcement was likely before Obama heads this week to Asia but said the special envoy, Stephen Bosworth, would travel later.

"I think it's quite likely," the official said of a Bosworth visit to North Korea.

North Korea has invited Bosworth to visit for talks to end what it calls Washington's "hostile" policy toward the communist state.

The United States has said it is willing to sit down with North Korea but only if such a meeting is considered as part of the six-nation talks that led to the 2005 and 2007 agreements for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

"The main thing is that we want to encourage the resumption of the six-party talks. If that can be done in some other way, we will do it that way, but the invitation is for him to go to Pyongyang," the anonymous official said.

But State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters he had no announcement to make on any travel by Bosworth, the US special representative on North Korea.

North Korea has unleashed a string of actions this year that infuriated the Obama administration, including testing a nuclear bomb and test-firing a missile over Japan, a close Washington ally.

While the Obama administration has sought dialogue with US adversaries from Iran to Cuba, its response to North Korea has been largely comprised of punishment, including a tightening of sanctions led by the United Nations.

But officials in recent days have made it clear they are willing to sit down with North Korea, in Pyongyang or elsewhere, so long as the communist state acknowledges it is bound by previous commitments under the six-way talks.

The administration has flatly ruled out recognition of North Korea as a nuclear weapons power -- which many experts believe is leader Kim Jong-Il's ultimate goal amid questions about his health.

The Center for a New American Security, a think-tank close to Obama's Democratic Party, issued a report on Monday saying that a negotiated settlement was the sole viable solution on North Korea.

It called for an agreement to require early actions by North Korea to get rid of its nuclear program and to be comprehensive enough to change Pyongyang's calculations that its best interest was maintaining its weapons.

"The alternatives to a negotiated settlement are few and undesirable," the report said, calling policies relying on military force or seeking regime change fraught with danger.

"Thus, the question for US policymakers is not whether to negotiate, but how to increase the odds that diplomacy will succeed while avoiding the pitfalls that hampered prior talks," it said.

The United States has periodically sent envoys in the past to Pyongyang, despite the lack of diplomatic relations, but Bosworth's trip would be the first such mission since Obama took office in January.

Former US president Bill Clinton visited the North Korean capital in August to help free two journalists, although officials said it was considered a private trip.

Two newspapers, South Korea's Hankyoreh and Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun, have quoted unnamed sources saying that Bosworth had agreed to go to Pyongyang in late November.