By Jack Kim
SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.S. envoy for North Korea failed to secure a firm commitment from the isolated state to resume nuclear disarmament talks but said on Thursday he had won assurances that Pyongyang supports the languishing deal.
Stephen Bosworth, speaking after a three-day trip to North Korea, described as "candid and businesslike" his talks with First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju, the man seen as the mastermind of the North's nuclear policy.
Bosworth said there "is common understanding with the DPRK (North Korea) on the need to implement the 2005 joint statement and to resume the six-party process," referring to the 2005 deal where the North takes apart its nuclear arms program in return for massive aid and an end to its diplomatic isolation.
But he added: "It remains to be seen when and how the DPRK will return to the six-party talks."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, as a preliminary meeting, Bosworth's talks were "quite positive" as the Obama administration pursues an approach of "strategic patience in close coordination with our six-party allies."
"And I think that making it clear to the North Koreans what we had expected and how we were moving forward is exactly what was called for," she told reporters in Washington.
North Korea walked away from the negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States a year ago.
Five months later it detonated a nuclear device, its second such test, resulting in tightened U.N. sanctions that further damaged the North's crippled economy.
Bosworth, who was speaking in the South Korean capital, flies to Beijing on Friday, then to Tokyo and Moscow for meetings before returning to Washington next week.
The resumption of talks with the North "is something that will require further consultation from all six of us," he said.
"It is important to point out that these were exploratory talks, not negotiations. It is certainly our hope, based on these discussions in Pyongyang, that six-party talks can resume expeditiously and we can get back to the important work of denuclearization."
A U.S. official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said North Korean officials had not asked for a second meeting with Bosworth in the future.
The official said the North Koreans raised the issue of a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War and were told other issues could be addressed if Pyongyang returned to the six-party talks and took steps to eliminate nuclear weapons.
RIGHT-HAND MAN
Bosworth met the North's top nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan as well as Kang, leader Kim Jong-il's right-hand man for dealings with the outside world.
The U.S. envoy said he conveyed President Barack Obama's message that failure to move ahead on the disarmament deal was an obstacle to realizing Pyongyang's long-sought goal of improving ties with Washington.
Once the six-party process resumed, Bosworth said, progress could then be made on issues such as talks on a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War.
Analysts said the North's broken economy may be forcing it back to the bargaining table, where it hopes to win aid in return for a fresh promise to give up its nuclear arsenal.
Pyongyang's recent move to revalue its currency may be a another sign that the communist state is struggling to maintain control of its economy, experts said.
The move appears to have met with widespread anger after it inflated the price of goods for already impoverished consumers and slashed the wealth of a burgeoning merchant class.
Traders in the Chinese border city of Dandong told Reuters that business has been drying up in North Korea after the removal of two zeros from the face value of the currency, a move that could spell months of uncertainty for the fragile economy.
(Additional reporting by Christine Kim, Jon Herskovitz in Seoul, Lucy Hornby in Dandong; Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Jonathan Thatcher; Editing by John O'Callaghan)
