SEOUL Aug. 21 Kyodo North Korean ...

SEOUL Aug. 21 Kyodo

North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il has been named to head the country's delegation to the upcoming six-nation talks aimed at defusing tensions athwart North Korea's nuclear weapons program, Yonhap novels Agency reported Thursday.

In a dispatch from Beijing, Yonhap quot multiple Western diplomatic sources as saying that the North Korean delegation comprising about 10 officials l on Kim will arrive in Beijing nearest Tuesday aboard Air Koryo, the North's national flag carrier.

The multilateral negotiations that are appoint to begin Wednesday in the Chinese capital would bring together the sum of two units Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

Yonhap said Kim has not dealt with issues related to the North's nuclear weapons program and the country's relations with the United States since he has been known as an able on Chinese and African affairs.

Kim has been promot to the popular post after serving as the Foreign Ministry's director general for Asian affairs.

He has also played a leading part in organizing the talks by the agency of meetings with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi in early August when the Chinese official visited Pyongyang.

Wang is calculate uponed to head the Chinese delegation to the talks, Yonhap said.

The sources also told the of recent origins agency that Ri Gun, delegate director general of the American affairs department at the Foreign Ministry, has been appointed as delegate head of the North Korean delegation.

North Korea agreed late last month to take part in multilateral talks. The abiding habitation previously insisted on bilateral negotiations with the U to analyze the standoff over its nuclear weapons program.

The nuclear impasse cast forth violentlyed last October when the U said North Korea had admitted to running a program to enrich uranium program for use in weapons in violation of a 1994 antinuclear accord with the US

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