The U.S. special envoy for the long-stalled six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue arrived in Seoul Monday for an international conference on a regional peace initiative proposed by South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
Sydney Seiler is also scheduled to have meetings with senior government officials, including his counterpart Shin Chae-hyun, the foreign ministry's director general handling the North Korean nuclear issue, the U.S. State Department said in a press release Sunday.
It marks his second visit to Seoul since he became the U.S. special envoy for the six-party talks in September.
Upon arrival in an airport, the U.S. envoy said that he and Shin will talk about ways to "continue to pursue our six-party talks diplomacy and work together to create conditions necessary for resuming the talks and coordinate across the board our North Korean policy."
Seiler will then represent the U.S. at the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Forum, slated to open Tuesday for a three-day run, to exchange views on Park's peace vision. Also attending the forum will be senior officials and diplomats from China, Japan, Russia, Mongolia and the European Union.
Park's initiative is aimed at promoting peace by building trust in a step-by-step manner. It calls for countries to start with softer, non-political issues, such as environmental issues and disaster relief, to foster trust before expanding cooperation to tackling serious political and security matters.
After Seoul, Seiler will also visit China and Japan, the department said.
He will travel to Beijing on Thursday for meetings with senior Chinese officials before flying to Tokyo on Saturday for talks with Japanese officials, including Keiichi Ono, director of the foreign ministry's Northeast Asia division of the Asian and Oceanian affairs bureau, the department said.
Separately, South Korea's top nuclear envoy Hwang Joon-kook plans to meet his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei on Thursday in Beijing to discuss ways to reopen the stalled six-party talks. The planned meeting between Hwang and Wu will coincide with the visit by Seiler to the Chinese capital.
The six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia have been stalled since late 2008 when the North walked away from the negotiation table. (Yonhap)
