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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - A senior U.N. envoy held talks with North Korean officials Wednesday and the North's top nuclear negotiator met his Chinese counterpart amid an international push for the regime to rejoin disarmament negotiations.
The flurry of diplomacy heightened speculation there could be a breakthrough to jump-start the six-nation negotiations, which include the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan.
North Korea walked away from the talks last year during a standoff over its nuclear and missile programs but has been reaching out to Washington, Seoul and Beijing in recent months. Analysts say the about-face shows the regime is feeling the pinch from sanctions and maybe about to rejoin the talks in return for aid, amid signs its chronic food shortages are worsening.
In Pyongyang, U.N. political chief B. Lynn Pascoe called on North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun. Footage broadcast by APTN in Pyongyang showed Pascoe exchanging handshakes and small talk on the weather with North Korean officials.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency did not report what they discussed.
The envoy, who flew to Pyongyang on Tuesday for a four-day trip, is reportedly bearing a letter from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. It is the first visit by a high-level U.N. official to North Korea since 2004, according to Seoul's Foreign Ministry.
Meanwhile in Beijing, the top nuclear negotiators from North Korea and China discussed for a second day how to restart the six-nation talks, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il dispatched the North's negotiator after telling a top Chinese Communist Party official on Monday that Pyongyang is committed to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
The discussions between the negotiators focused on the North's calls for U.N. sanctions to be lifted and a peace treaty signed with Washington formally ending the Korean War before it returns to the disarmament talks, Yonhap reported, citing unidentified diplomatic sources in Beijing.
"This is a sign that the resumption of the six-party talks is imminent," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
The North's top negotiator "is expected to tell Chinese officials about North Korea's disarmament plan in a more concrete manner" - probably in return for aid from Beijing, he said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Tuesday the United States supported talks between North Korea and China and hoped the contact would lead to a resumption of the nuclear disarmament discussions.
He said North Korea seemed to be saying the right things recently but added: "The right words must be followed by action. Words by themselves are not sufficient."
Pyongyang cites the U.S. military presence in South Korea as its main reason for building up its nuclear weapons program. Washington says Pyongyang must come back to the talks first before any discussion about political and economic concessions.
The North's chronic food shortage is expected to worsen this year, following a decrease in food production over the past year because of bad weather and the suspension of South Korea's fertilizer aid, according to the state-run Korea Rural Economic Institute in Seoul.
The North's total grain production for 2009 was estimated at about 4.4 million tons (4 million metric tons), down 9 percent from 2008, while the country needs 5.7 million tons (5.2 million metric tons) to feed its 24 million people per year, said institute researcher Kwon Tae-jin. He said about 2 million people could be "very seriously" affected by the worsening food shortage.
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Associated Press writers Kwang-tae Kim and Hongkeun Jeon in Seoul, and Foster Klug in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
