A Dose of Direct Diplomacy

Posted on Sep 12, 2009

wsj.com

Former U.S. representative to the U.N. John Bolton was no fan of the saber-rattling Kim Jong Il, pictured.

In news that likely stands John Bolton’s mustache on end,  the U.S. has announced that it plans to hold direct—not mediated—talks with North Korea in an attempt to get Pyongyang back into the multilateral discussions aimed at ending its nuclear program.

The BBC:

The US says it would hold direct talks with North Korea to persuade it to return to stalled multilateral talks on ending its nuclear programme.

A spokesman for the US state department said that there had been no decision on when such talks might take place.

Philip Crowley insisted the move was not a policy shift and talks would take place within “the six-party process”.

North Korea pulled out of multilateral talks in April after international criticism following a rocket launch.

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.