US' Negroponte to visit Seoul, Tokyo, Beijing
WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - Deputy U.S. Secretary of State John Negroponte will travel to Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing this month, the State Department announced on Tuesday as the United States continues its push for a long-delayed declaration of North Korea's nuclear activities.
Negroponte will travel to the three Asian capitals May 7 to 12 "for discussions with his counterparts on a broad range of bilateral, regional and global issues," a State Department statement said.
The statement said Negroponte would consult with South Korea, Japan and China on recent developments in the region and political and economic issues and strengthen ties and cooperation on regional and global issues. It gave no other details.
China hosts six-party talks aimed at getting North Korea to eventually give up all nuclear weapons and programs under a 2005 multilateral agreement. Tokyo and Seoul are involved as well. The agreement to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula was reached among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The accord under which North Korea agreed to abandon all its nuclear programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic benefits has been bogged down by Pyongyang's failure to produce a declaration of those programs by the end of last year.
A sticking point has been Pyongyang's reluctance to discuss any transfer of nuclear technology to other nations, notably Syria, as well as its suspected pursuit of uranium enrichment.
(editing by Patricia Zengerle)
