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US academics and former senior officials met North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator Ri Yong Ho in Singapore yesterday to get a feel for each other’s positions on Pyongyang’s nuclear missile programmes.
Leon Sigal, who is director of the Northeast Asia Co-operative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council NGO, explained: “It’s two ways of taking each other’s temperature.”
The US and North Korea have no formal diplomatic ties, but former US officials occasionally meet Pyongyang diplomats.
North Korea has indicated willingness to rejoin long-stalled six-party denuclearisation talks but has resisted US demands that it first take concrete steps to show good faith.
It told Washington earlier this month that it is willing to impose a temporary moratorium on its nuclear tests if Washington scraps planned military drills with South Korea this year.
The US State Department called the linking of the military drills with a possible nuclear test “an implicit threat,” while asserting its openness to dialogue.
