U.S. welcomes N Korea talks stance
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Wu, left, meets with North Korean parliament chief Kim on Wednesday.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. White House has welcomed word that North Korea had told a visiting Chinese leader that it was prepared to hold a second round of multilateral talks to discuss its nuclear weapons program.
"We are encouraged by these reports that North Korea has decided to attend the talks," U.S. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Wu Bangguo, China's parliament chief and the No. 2 official in the Communist Party, received the commitment from North Korea during a three-day visit to Pyongyang, according to reports by state media outlets in North Korea and China.
Meanwhile, the highest ranking North Korean ever to defect has told members of the U.S. Congress Thursday that the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il is unstable and should not be trusted to enter into an agreement to end its nuclear program.
Rep. Christopher Cox, ., said that Hwang Jang-yop, an 81-year-old former secretary of North Korea's ruling Worker's Party and secretary of foreign affairs, told members of the House Policy Committee, "the regime, albeit it takes great pains to show us it is stable, is in fact profoundly unstable." ( Regime 'unstable')
White House officials said the next round of talks, like the first, would be held in Beijing and include North Korea, the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
Some U.S. officials have talked of a second round in December, but administration officials said no dates were set.
Wu is quoted as saying that the nuclear standoff between the United States and North Korea must be resolved through negotiations "whatever 'the trouble or turbulence' lies ahead."
He is China's highest-level official to make an official goodwill visit to North Korea in more than two years.
North Korea's KCNA news agency said Thursday: "The DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) side expressed its willingness to take part in future talks if they provide a process of putting into practice the proposal for a package solution based on the principle of simultaneous actions."
U.S. President George W. Bush this month offered for the first time to give written security guarantees to North Korea -- but only in some form of joint statement produced by the six-party talks.
North Korea, which has insisted on a bilateral nonaggression pact with the United States, initially rejected the Bush initiative but now says it will consider it so long as the country's concerns are addressed.
North and South Korea, China, the United States, Japan and Russia met for the first time in Beijing in August to in an attempt to resolve the crisis over North Korea's nuclear program.
