The meetings between officials from the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) mark a resumption of diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang after a three-year hiatus.

If the two sides decide to show real sincerity in improving their ties, the meetings could become a meaningful development and lead to the resuming of stalled multilateral talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The US delegation, led by Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, is meeting DPRK Vice-Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan in New York on Thursday and Friday. Last week's talks between nuclear negotiators from DPRK and the Republic of Korea (ROK) in Bali, Indonesia formed the foundation for the New York discussions.

For more than a year, Washington and Seoul have played tough with Pyongyang. On several occasions, the peninsula was pushed to the brink of war. Such a hard-line approach has done little to improve the situation on the peninsula, serving instead merely to drive the two Koreas further apart.

With members of the international community - China included - making continuous efforts to resume the Six-Party Talks in the wake of the growing animosity and tension between the two Koreas, positive moves and rhetoric from both parties now seem to suggest a thaw in their relations. This will undoubtedly ease tensions and contribute to bringing the concerned parties back to the negotiating table.

On Monday, the ROK approved local civic groups giving flour aid to the DPRK. It also proposed a working-level meeting with its neighbor in the north for talks over suspended tours to a scenic mountain north of the border.

The ministerial meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations held last week in Bali, Indonesia provided a chance for officials from the two Koreas to sit together.

Their chief nuclear envoys also held discussions on nuclear issues and a possible attempt to resume the Six-Party Talks that comprise China, DPRK, ROK, the US, Japan and Russia, and which are the only multilateral disarmament mechanism for the peninsula. As a staunch advocate of the six-party process, which has remained stagnant since 2008, China is delighted to see these positive developments. They will help build up a good momentum to the resumption of the Six-Party Talks process, which China believes is the only means for resolving the peninsula issue in peace.

Nonetheless, to keep the momentum going and break the current impasse in the talks, the parties concerned should come up with more political wisdom and push for an early resumption of the talks without setting any conditions beforehand.

The US, ROK and Japan have said they are not prepared to "have talks for talks' sake". But this seemingly reasonable stance does not hold water. To solve the long-standing and complicate peninsula issue, no significant result will be reaped if some of the parties concerned refuse to even come to the negotiating table.

(China Daily 07/29/2011 page8)