US envoy to visit North Korea

The US wants to press North Korea on security

The US Government has said it will send an envoy to North Korea soon, in an apparent attempt to reopen dialogue deadlocked for almost two years.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said US President George W Bush announced the decision to South Korean President, Kim Dae-jung, in a telephone call on Wednesday.

Real progress with the North depends on full resolution of the security issues on the Korean Peninsula

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer

It followed two days of talks in New York between the State Department's Korea expert, Jack Pritchard, and North Korean officials.

There are no indications as to whether North Korea has accepted the offer, but the Japanese prime minister reported after his meeting with the reclusive state's leader last week, that Kim Jong-il said he was ready for talks with Washington.

Substantive US-North Korean dialogue has been stalled since the end of the Clinton administration. Relations markedly worsened in January when President Bush branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil".

'Early date'

Mr Fleisher warned that the decision to send an envoy to Pyongyang did not mean Mr Bush's bleak assessment of the state had changed.

He said the president still deplored Kim Jong-il's "starvation of his own people, the militarisation efforts that he is leading, the massive number of conventional weapons that he has on the border with South Korea, as well as proliferation of weapons of mass destruction".

Bush says North Korea is part of an "axis of evil"

President Bush and his South Korean counterpart agreed that "real progress with the North depends on full resolution of the security issues on the Korean Peninsula, including the North's possession and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles".

According to the White House, the envoy will travel to North Korea at "an early date".

A senior South Korean government official told the Associated Press the visit was likely to take place before the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum (Apec) scheduled to be held in Mexico in late October.

The envoy has not been named but it is widely expected to be James Kelly, the State Department's Assistant Secretary for East Asia.

The announcement is the latest move in a diplomatic dance that has been going on between the US and North Korea since President George W Bush took office.

In the spring, North Korea showed interest in renewing the dialogue with Washington.

James Kelly was scheduled to visit Pyongyang in early July but the visit was postponed after a deadly naval clash between North and South Korea at the end of June.

Reaching out

The ice was somewhat broken in late July when US Secretary of State Colin Powell had an informal chat with North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun at a regional forum.

A week later, the US despatched Jack Pritchard to North Korea for a ceremony to mark the start of construction of two light water reactors partly financed by the United States.

But the BBC's US State Department correspondent, John Leyne, says it is the dire state of North Korea's economy and possibly also America's uncompromising attitude towards Iraq, which seem to have forced Pyongyang to the table.

North Korea has been reaching out to its adversaries of late.

In addition to the summit with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, at which Mr Kim apologised for kidnapping several Japanese nationals, North and South Korea began work last week to construct cross-border rail and road links.