U.S., N. Korea set to talk talks

The U.S. is worried about North Korea's missile development program

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. envoy to North Korea, Jack Pritchard, will travel to New York Friday to meet with North Korean officials to discuss resuming high-level dialogue, a senior State Department official has told CNN.

These will be talks with a "small t," the official emphasized.

But, he said, both sides would discuss "how we go about resuming dialogue ... when and where."

He went on to say that what he called "big T" talks would involve "travel to Pyongyang."

Pritchard's meeting will be with Pak Gil-yon, the head of the North Korean mission to the United Nations.

Having no diplomatic relations the U.N. has been the normal channel for what little dialogue there has been between the two countries.

Publicly, Secretary of State Colin Powell has offered to resume talks "any place, at any time ... without preconditions," but until recently North Korea responded with a stony silence.

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In April, a South Korean envoy, Lim Dong-won, brought the U.S. plan for resumption of talks to North Korea.

Lim told the Bush administration that North Korea said it was prepared to host a high-level U.S. envoy to discuss improving relations.

Normalization

During the final months of the Clinton administration, relations between the two nations seemed to be on the fast track to normalization.

Then-Secretary of State of State Madeleine Albright paid a visit to Pyongyang in October 2000 with the expectation President Clinton might visit before the end of his term of office.

However, time ran out before a deal could be struck.

The United States hopes to persuade North Korea to give up its missile program in exchange for other compensation.

The Bush administration, like the Clinton administration, maintains that the secretive communist state is one of the world's biggest distributors of missiles and missile technology.

Relations between Washington and Pyongyang plummeted earlier this year after Bush dubbed North Korea as an "axis of evil," along with Iraq and Iran in his January State of the Union address.

However, U.S. officials quickly reiterated that they were prepared to begin a dialogue at any time.

U.S., Japanese and South Korean diplomats are expected to hold talks in San Francisco next week to coordinate their policies on North Korea.