Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 3 | The U.S. and North Korea: A Track II Meeting Brings Results

A great deal of credit for the resumption of official talks with North Korea this past summer goes to a "Track 1½" diplomatic session conducted in Manhattan on June 30 and July 1 and orchestrated by Donald Zagoria of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP). The two-day meeting received what in diplomatic circles can only be called rave reviews:

• U.S. Special Envoy Joseph DeTrani wrote: "You truly played a decisive role in getting this process back in motion. Our sincere thanks."

• North Korea's U.N. Ambassador Han Song-ryul wrote offering thanks for: "...setting up the DPRK [Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea]-U.S. confidential meetings, which provided [the] decisive breakthrough for the resumption of the nuclear six-party talks ... [and] for your project on Track 1½ diplomacy with which we could make big steps for the resolution of nuclear issues and better bilateral relations."

But it was not a single session that yielded success. NCAFP, a Carnegie Corporation grantee, conducted similar sessions, in 2003 and 2004, that organizers now say provided important "confidence building."

Nor was it a single organization that worked towards a renewal of talks. Several organizations, again, many of them Carnegie Corporation grantees, have maintained a steady flow of meetings, encouraging all parties to the talks to come together in the more informal settings of Track 1½ where both sides could let down their guard just enough to have what might be called "quality time," during which they can glean some better understanding of the other's needs and the perspectives that shape their positions.

An important aspect of the New York City session was to address the "social psychology" issues at stake, what some in this field refer to as the "psychology of victimhood" which can increase the level of "mistrust and hostility."

In the case of North Korea, there were repeated references to "disturbing words" used by United States officials, especially Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's description of North Korea as "an outpost of tyranny," which needed to be resolved.

"The North Koreans came to these talks seeking a retraction to Condi Rice's «outpost of tyranny' statement or, more importantly, some assurances that the United States' policy was not to try to topple the DPRK regime," says Zagoria.

The sessions, conducted first at the Asia Society and the next day at Carnegie Corporation's offices, drew an impressive list of unofficial American powerbrokers, representatives of South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, as well as top officials from the White House, National Security Council, State Department and Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The North Koreans sent representatives thought to be of equal stature.

The Americans and North Koreans were provided private quarters, where they met for less than two hours to discuss resumption of the six-party talks.

The State Department daily briefing of July 1 noted that "U.S. Special Envoy for Six-Party Talks Joseph DeTrani and our Korean Affairs Director Jim Foster are attending the conference in New York ... Yesterday in the context of the seminar, there was a contact between Mr. DeTrani and [North Korean foreign policy official] Mr. Li Gun†this was not a negotiation."

Rather than "negotiation," official Washington preferred to call the interaction "an overture," which it would later characterize by saying "the atmosphere was constructive."

During those private sessions, Zagoria says, "the North Koreans interpreted the statements by U.S. officials as reassurance that U.S. policy was to recognize the DPRK as a sovereign state.ÚAnd the U.S. heard enough to be confident that the North Koreans were going to set a date for the resumption of the talks. And it was on this basis that U.S. and North Korean officials agreed to meet formally in Beijing to formally set the resumption of the talks."

Or, in the words of a statement issued by the North Korean foreign ministry: "A special mention should be made of the fact that delegates of the DPRK Foreign Ministry and the U.S. Department of State met in New York from June 30 to July 1 and exhaustively negotiated the issue of providing the DPRK with a justification for returning to the six-party talks and reached a consensus of views on the matter in the main."