The four-day-long third round of the six-party talks on the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula will be held in Beijing. As a new round of efforts by the international community to boost a solution of the Korean nuclear issue, what will be the prospect of the talks? Yang Chengxu, a research fellow at China Institute of International Studies, accepted an exclusive interview by Jiefang Daily. He believes that although the six parties all hope to accomplish something, it is still difficult to make a breakthrough in this round of talks.

Yang said the second round of six-party talks held in February in Beijing produced certain results, but the sharp conflicts between the DPRK and the US in their bottom lines prevented the second round of six-party talks from making substantive breakthrough.

During the last round of talks, the DPRK put forward a "reward for freeze" proposal to conditionally and incompletely abandon the nuclear program whilst the US stuck to its stand to demand Pyongyang's "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement" of its nuclear program. Apparently both parties had distinct difference in their demands. This round is the continuation of the second-round talks and Yang estimated that the difference would still remain an insurmountable difficulty. If the US and the DPRK refuse to make concessions to each other, the talks will hardly yield any results.

The current situation, however, is that on the one hand this year is the presidential election in the United States and the Bush administration must consider whether his handling of the Korean nuclear issue is good for the election. Since Bush had always considered the DPRK a so-called "axis of evil" country along with Iraq and Iran, the common US voters also harbor hostility toward the DPRK. If the US side made a concession at this moment, it might not be good for the election. On the other hand, for the DPRK, the US-DPRK relations had improved before President Bush Jr. took office. The two sides were even discussing Clinton's visit to the DPRK. So for the DPRK, the Democrat Party may be an easier rival to deal with. Considering this the DPRK might not easily "go soft" toward Bush.

Based on the above analysis, Yang believes that on the basis of the progress made in the last round of talks, if the various parties can, in this round of talks, further elaborate and clarify the questions about "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement" and "reward for freeze", this can be counted as already an achievement.

The article was carried on Jiefang Daily and translated by People's Daily Online