More talks will be needed to bring North Korea back to nuclear disarmament negotiations but it does want to improve relations with South Korea, a top United Nations official said Saturday.
Lynn Pascoe, who said Friday after visiting Pyongyang that the North was "not eager" to return to the nuclear forum, predicted a "major discussion" among the six parties about restarting the stalled dialogue.
"I think this is going to be a major discussion. It is a major discussion," Pascoe, the under-secretary-general for political affairs, told reporters at South Korea's Incheon airport after arriving from China.
The UN official Friday ended a four-day trip to the North for talks on UN programmes and the nuclear issue.
He said in Beijing Friday he held "frank" discussions with officials on issues including the six-party talks and UN sanctions which were tightened following its missile launches and nuclear test last year.
"They certainly are not happy with the sanctions and they certainly were not eager — not ruling out, but not eager — to return to the six-party talks," said Pascoe.
Chinese and North Korean nuclear negotiators held several days of talks in Beijing this week aimed at restarting the forum which the North quit last April.
Media reports said Pyongyang was sticking to its two conditions for coming back: a lifting of sanctions and a US commitment to discuss a formal peace treaty.
Washington, Seoul and Tokyo say the North must return unconditionally and show commitment to scrapping its nuclear programme before other issues are dealt with.
During the Beijing visit which ended Saturday, the two sides discussed "speeding up the denuclearisation of the peninsula through confidence-building such as the conclusion of a peace treaty, the lifting of sanctions and the resumption of the six-party talks," North Korea's foreign ministry said.
As the nuclear standoff continued, the North's relations with the South also worsened sharply, although it began making peace overtures last year.
Pascoe, quoted by Yonhap news agency, said that in general the North Koreans "did want to improve the relations (with South Korea), but the specifics are another issue, of course".
He said his trip, the first by a high-level UN official since 2004, had been useful. "We worked quite hard to improve the reengagement with the North and the United Nations and I think in that we were quite successful."
Yonhap, quoting a diplomatic source in Beijing, said Friday the North's chief nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-Gwan would visit the United States next month.
The US State Department said there were no discussions or plans "at this point" for such a visit.
Some analysts believe the North will eventually feel obliged to return to negotiations given its worsening economy and acute food shortages.
Pascoe warned Friday that declining donations were hurting UN humanitarian projects in the North.
He said initiatives were about "one-quarter of what they should be" and were shrinking due to "donor fatigue."
"That for us is a real concern," he added, without giving specific information on the food situation.
The UN's World Food Programme, in an assessment published last September, said one third of women and young children are malnourished.
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