SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Sunday proposed high-level talks with the United States, saying that it was ready to discuss the easing of tensions and eventually, the removal of nuclear weapons from the peninsula.
The North’s proposal indicated that it was moving toward negotiations after months of bellicose language, including threats to launch nuclear strikes at the United States and South Korea.
In the past few weeks, North Korea has invited a special envoy from Japan and sent one to Beijing, where it told Chinese leaders that it was willing to return to the negotiating table. It had also proposed discussions with South Korea, though the initial agreement to hold talks in Seoul collapsed last week because of differences over the level of seniority of the delegations.
Washington, however, has been skeptical of such overtures, given North Korea’s history of alternating between provocations and engagement. The United States has insisted that the North first demonstrate a willingness to abandon its nuclear weapons program before Washington would sit down and talk.
A spokesman of the North’s National Defense Commission said on Sunday that the United States would not raise preconditions if it was sincere in its efforts to defuse tensions on the peninsula.
In its “crucial statement,” carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, the commission’s spokesman said the United States can set the venue and date of any talks.
The commission is the North’s top governing agency and is led by Kim Jong-un, the new North Korean leader.
There was no immediate response from Washington. By mentioning the security of the “U.S. mainland,” North Korea appeared to challenge Washington to appease it with dialogue and concessions or face the prospects of North Korea continuing to expand its nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs.
Washington has said that North Korea is trying to build intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States and nuclear warheads small enough to mount on them, although American intelligence agencies differ over how close the North is to mastering such technologies. North Korea successfully launched a satellite into orbit on a three-stage rocket in December and conducted its third nuclear test in February in what it called an attempt to “miniaturize” a warhead.
Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies in Dongguk University in Seoul, said that he did not “see any fundamental change in the North Korean position” in the statement.
The North’s statement also said that the denuclearization of the peninsula must include “totally ending the U.S. nuclear threats” against the North, essentially repeating its long-held position that it would discuss dismantling its nuclear weapons programs but only as part of broader nuclear arms reduction talks in the region.
The North Korean latest overture followed the summit talks between President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, earlier this month and comes before Mr. Xi’s scheduled meeting with President Park Geun-hye of South Korea later this month.
Both Washington and Seoul have been trying to enlist the help from China, the North’s traditional ally, to check the North’s nuclear ambitions. And some analysts saw North Korea’s recent proposals of dialogue as attempts to create a rift between Beijing, which favored a negotiated end to the North’s nuclear crisis, and Washington and Seoul, which insisted that not only diplomacy but also economic sanctions were necessary to change the North’s course.
With Sunday’s overture toward Washington, North Korea was telling the South, Professor Kim said, that if Seoul did not engage in discussions, Pyongyang would try to go around it and talk directly with Washington.
The United States and North Korea reached an agreement in February 2012 in which Washington promised 240,000 tons of food aid and Pyongyang agreed to place a moratorium on uranium enrichment and nuclear and missile tests. But that deal quickly collapsed when the North launched a long-range rocket in April 2012 and the United States, seeing the launching as a provocative test of missile technology, scrapped the food aid and led efforts at the United Nations to tighten sanctions against the North.
That experience hardened Washington’s position. “The United States will not engage in talks merely for the sake of talks,” State Department’s senior envoy on North Korea, Glyn T. Davies, said Friday in a speech at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Mr. Davies said Washington was open to improved relations with North Korea “if it is willing to take concrete actions to live up to its international obligations and commitments, though given the events of this past year, the bar for a resumption of meaningful engagement is certainly now higher.”
Mr. Davies was scheduled to meet with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts in Washington this week to discuss North Korea.
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