North Korea is very likely to attend the six-party nuclear talks aimed to resolve the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue in September, James A. Leach, US congressman of Iowa, said Sunday.

 

Leach, who also serves as chairman of the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the US House of Representatives, arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday for a four-day trip there along with Tom Lantos, a California congressman.

 

Leach said although North Korean officials did not make very clear when they will return to the six-party talks, he still has "strong sense that there was pretty strong commitment to the week of September talks," the 63-year-old congressman said at a press conference held at the Information Resource Center of the US Embassy in downtown Seoul.

 

Earlier this week, Pyongyang proposed to postpone its participation in the second phase of the fourth round six-party talks to the week starts with September 12 because Washington has recently started large-scale military exercises dubbed "Ulji FocusLens-05" with South Korea and appointed a presidential envoy to oversee North Korea's human rights issues.

 

At the end of the first stage of the fourth-round six-party nuclear talks in early August, the concerning parties agreed to resume the talks in the week starts with August 29.

 

"In terms of the direction of the six-party talks, I think all of the parties are committed to the development of principles, to form basis to proffer serious discussions about agreements," said Leach.

 

Leach also outlined an optimistic development in the process of resolving the nuclear issue.

 

He said "it's very hopeful" that when the six-party talks resumed, "principles can be agreed." Then, in the months followed, parties may reach "agreements on various subjects." And last, the "agreements are accepted in formal way by individual states."

 

He also said during his visit there, he met several times with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan, also chief negotiator to the six-party talks.

 

"We did not go into details precisely in terms of North Korea's usage of its nuclear capacities, but he (Kim) made clear the North Koreans do hold very strong that they have the right to have light water reactors," said Leach.

 

Construction of the reactors, part of a 1994 US-North Korea agreement in exchange for dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, was suspended in December 2003 after the latest nuclear issue erupted.

 

(Xinhua News Agency September 5, 2005)