U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2009)

U.S. Department of State

Ian Kelly
Department Spokesman

Daily Press Briefing

Washington, DC
October 7, 2009

1:18 p.m. EDT

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QUESTION: Sorry, thank you. Just -- North Korea. Have you yet -- has the Administration yet gotten a readout from the Chinese on Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to North Korea?

MR. KELLY: Yeah, we did. We got it in Beijing. Our Embassy got a readout. And this is part of our whole process of closely consulting with all of our partners. I'm not going to get into the details of it. I will say that we told the Chinese that we welcome their efforts to convince the North Koreans to return to Six-Party Talks. These are efforts which we hope will lead to our shared goal of the resumption of the Six-Party Talks, leading to the denuclearization of the peninsula.

We haven't made any decision on whether or not to have these bilateral talks. You know what our position is; we're open to it. But we are only open to a kind of bilateral dialogue that would lead to the resumption of Six-Party Talks. And we just want to make sure that if -- once the decision is made, that the talks are arranged in such a way that it would lead to the resumption of the multilateral context of the Six-Party Talks.

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(The briefing was concluded at 1:52 p.m.)