Rice to Meet North Korean Diplomat

Condi to Meet North Korean Diplomat

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet next week with her North Korean counterpart and the foreign ministers of four other countries involved in the effort to end Pyongyang's nuclear programs, the State Department said yesterday.

The session, which will take place on the sidelines of a Southeast Asia security conference in Singapore, will mark Rice's first meeting with the North Korean official, Pak Ui Chun, and follows on an extraordinary thawing in the tensions between the two countries.

The meeting is billed as an "informal" gathering of the foreign ministers from the countries participating in the six-party talks, which also include China, South Korea, Russia and Japan.

[Washington Post]