— Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Thursday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il wants direct talks with South Korea’s leader — an offer unlikely to be accepted until Pyongyang takes responsibility for violence that killed 50 South Koreans last year.
A summit would be a major step toward smoothing over animosity fueled by the bloodshed, and a personal call from Kim is notable, though North Korea regularly pushes for the resumption of aid-for-nuclear-disarmament talks. It generally wants to return to the negotiating table without preconditions, however.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has also floated the possibility of one-on-one talks with Kim — but only if the North takes responsibility for the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on Pyongyang and an artillery attack on a South Korean island.
Carter told reporters hours after he returned from the North that he and three former European leaders didn’t have a hoped-for meeting with Kim during their three-day trip.
But he said that Kim sent them a written personal message as they were leaving, saying he’s prepared for a summit meeting with the South Korean president at any time. Carter said North Korean officials expressed deep regret for the deaths on the South Korean warship Cheonan and for the civilians killed in the island shelling.
He added, however, that it was clear that “they will not publicly apologize and admit culpability for the Cheonan incident.” North Korea denies sinking the ship, despite a South Korea-led international investigation that blamed the country. It says it was provoked into the island shelling by South Korean live fire drills.
Carter is well-respected in North Korea for his role in helping work out a 1994 nuclear deal that may have averted a war. But officials in Seoul and Washington have put little stock in his ability to engineer a breakthrough this time in nuclear talks.
It has been more than two years since nuclear negotiators from the United States and neighboring nations last met with the North in an effort to persuade it to abandon its atomic weapons programs.
