Senior US diplomat in talks over N.Korea

Senior US diplomat Kurt Campbell was due to meet yesterday with Chinese foreign ministry officials to discuss North Korea after the death of Kim Jong-Il, a US embassy spokesman said.
Campbell, the assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, is the first US diplomat to visit North Korea’s closest ally since the leader of the isolated state died from a heart attack on December 17, raising concerns over the stability of the impoverished, nuclear-armed nation, where a famine killed hundreds of thousands of people in the 1990s and where severe food shortages persist.
A spokesman for the US embassy in Beijing said Campbell would be holding talks with vice-foreign ministers Cui Tiankai and Zhang Zhijun yesterday, adding the meetings were due to end later in the afternoon. A range of important bilateral, regional and global issues, including the latest developments related to North Korea and Burma,” would be discussed, according to the spokesman.
Campbell’s trip will also take him to South Korea and Japan before he returns to Washington on Saturday.