U.S., China view N. Korea missile launch as bad idea: U.S. envoy+

BEIJING, March 4 Kyodo - Stephen Bosworth, the new U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, said Wednesday the United States and China both believe it would be ''not a good idea'' for North Korea to go ahead with a missile launch.

Following meetings with senior Chinese officials in Beijing, Bosworth also said
that both countries view the six-party talks for denuclearizing North Korea as
central in dealing with the country and hope to resume negotiations soon.
''We both believe that it would be not a good idea to have a missile launch,''
Bosworth told reporters after his talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang
Jiechi and Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei.
Bosworth said the United States sees no distinction between a missile launch
and what North says would be the launching of a satellite.
North Korea has declared that it is ready to put into space the
Kwangmyongsong-2 experimental communications satellite. It says the satellite
will be carried by the launch vehicle Unha-2, which outside experts view as a
redesigned Taepodong-2 missile.
The United States holds that any such launch would be a violation of existing
U.N. Security Council resolutions and would increase tensions unnecessarily.
But Bosworth declined to say what measures will be taken should North Korea go
ahead with a launch.
On the six-party denuclearization talks, Bosworth said that in his meetings
with Chinese officials, there was ''a great convergence of views'' on the need
to resume the talks at an early date.
''We are very much committed to the notion that it is important to resume the
six-party process as soon as possible, and we believe that the six-party
process is central to all our efforts to deal with what's happening on the
Korean Peninsula,'' he said.
The denuclearization talks grouping the two Koreas, the United States, China,
Japan and Russia have been stalled since December due to differences over ways
to verify North Korea's nuclear activities.
China's Wu, the chairman of the multilateral talks, was quoted by state-run
Xinhua News Agency as saying that the task at hand is for countries to look for
a set of verification measures that all parties can agree on.
''My feeling is, the road has twists and turns, but the outlook is bright,'' he
was quoted as saying on the sidelines of a national assembly meeting in
Beijing.
Bosworth, the point man for North Korea in President Barack Obama's
administration, arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for the first leg of an Asia trip
aimed at discussing North Korea.
He is traveling to countries involved in the six-party talks for the first time
since he was named to the post.
''The president and the secretary of state have asked me to come here early in
my service, early in the new administration, in order to demonstrate the
importance that we attach to dealing effectively with the issues of the Korean
Peninsula,'' Bosworth said.
''We're still conducting our review of policy in Washington,'' he said. ''We're
making good progress, but as part of that policy review, we very much wanted to
have directly the views of our partners in the six-party process.''
==Kyodo
2009-03-05 00:30:52