China tries to woo N. Korea

BEIJING – A top Chinese Communist Party official met with North Korea’s No. 2 leader Saturday seeking a change of heart after Pyongyang reportedly rejected any further negotiations over its nuclear weapons program.

The head of the party’s international department, Wang Jiarui, who flew to Pyongyang on Saturday, had a “friendly conversation” with Kim Yong Nam, the North’s official news agency, KCNA, said without elaboration.

Wang also planned during his stay to meet the country’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, to give a “strong recommendation” that Pyongyang return to the six-party disarmament talks, South Korea’s Munhwa Ilbo newspaper reported, quoting diplomatic sources in Beijing.

Meanwhile, Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, reportedly has appealed to Kim to allow the watchdog U.N. agency to return to North Korea, which expelled agency inspectors on New Year’s Eve 2002.

“If it requires a special gesture, I am ready to go myself,” ElBaradei told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine in an interview published Saturday.

ElBaradei said his agency has no concrete information that North Korea has nuclear weapons, but added that Pyongyang has the know-how and enough plutonium to make “at least six to eight bombs.”

Reviving the stalled talks has taken on greater urgency since North Korea’s explosive but unconfirmed declaration earlier this month that it has become a nuclear power.

Xinhua, quoting an unidentified North Korean foreign ministry official, said earlier Saturday that the North no longer wanted to negotiate directly with the United States to ease the ongoing standoff over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

The official reiterated the communist regime’s decision on Feb. 10 to indefinitely suspend its participation in six-party nuclear disarmament talks with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, Xinhua said.

The United States and other countries are seeking to use what leverage they have – including the good will between North Korea and its last major ally, China – to persuade Pyongyang to resume multilateral negotiations. North Korea had demanded one-on-one meetings with the United States after saying it would withdraw from the six-party talks – a move Washington rejected.

Washington hopes Beijing will use its economic influence on the North to persuade Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table. Beijing has insisted it has little influence over Kim’s regime, though China is an indispensable source of fuel and trade for the impoverished North.