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By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

Senior North Korean officials at a 1.5 track meeting in London with US experts on Korean affairs expressed a desire to return to the six-party talks and said it was a “misunderstanding” that their country wants to be recognized as a nuclear state, a US participant reported.

Speaking to the press after the seminar on Oct. 2, Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council in New York, said that he had seen a “definite willingness” from North Korea to return to the talks and that he thought it was “possible to find common ground for a resolution” through dialogue and negotiation.

The “1.5-track” meeting between North Korean officials and US experts was held on Oct. 1 and 2 at Athenaeum Hotel in London.

Sigal went on to say he believed dialogue was the “only realistic means” of resolving the nuclear issue, adding that “a number of methods” for resolution could be available. He also reported “getting the sense that it would be possible to return to the spirit of the Sept. 19 2005 agreement,” referring to an agreement at the six-party talks for North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

Significantly, Sigal said the North Korean participants had called it a “misunderstanding” to believe their country wants to be recognized as a nuclear power. Indeed, he reported that the representatives at the meeting indicated that Pyongyang is not interested in such acknowledgement.

Experts read the remarks as a message from Pyongyang that it wants to begin negotiations through the six-party talks framework, and that it plans to approach them in good faith.

The governments in Seoul and Washington have been reluctant to restart the talks due to concerns that North Korea would not actually want to discuss denuclearization, but instead turn them into a forum for announcing its nuclear capabilities and demanding recognition of its status as a nuclear state. The remarks from the North Korean side at the meeting appeared aimed at allaying those concerns.

But with the South Korean and US governments requiring concrete actions to show a willingness to denuclearize before reopening the talks, the North Korean representatives may also have made some different proposals.

Stephen Bosworth, a former special representative on North Korea policy for the US State Department, called the atmosphere at the meeting “cordial and respectful.”

North Korea’s representatives, including Vice Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho, declined to speak to the press.

The meeting was organized by Tony Namkung, the Korean-American former vice director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

The meeting drew notice for the participation of senior officials from US President Barack Obama’s first term, including Bosworth and Joseph DeTrani, former director of the National Counterproliferation Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In addition to Ri, foreign ministry deputy general director Choi Son-hui and UN deputy ambassador Jang Il-hun attended on the North Korean side.

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