SEOUL — With the winding down of the war in Iraq allowing more diplomats to turn to the Korean peninsula, efforts are underway to set up a high-level meeting between the United States and North Korea within a couple of weeks, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
Although the timing and location have not been determined, the meeting could take place in China, which has been unusually active behind the scenes recently in nudging its old Communist ally toward talks, sources say.
The United States would most likely be represented by Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly, who during a visit to Pyongyang in October accused North Korea of cheating on a promise to mothball its nuclear program. That led to a crisis that has yet to cool. China and South Korea, and possibly Japan and Russia, might also participate in the talks.
"This could happen sooner than most people expect. There is a sense of hurry and urgency," a South Korean official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday.
In Washington, meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell observed that "there has been some overall improvement, I think, in the prospects for dialogue with North Korea." While declining to provide details on who might take part in discussions, or when, Powell told a group of foreign reporters that "a lot of pieces have come together."
In a surprise reversal after months of obstinacy, North Korea announced last weekend that it would accept a demand by the United States to hold talks in a multilateral setting.
Diplomats credit the collapse of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime with the apparent breakthrough. North Korea -- like Iraq, a member of what President Bush has called an "axis of evil" -- is similarly a totalitarian country that revolves around a cult of personality, and it would not be a stretch for the North Koreans to imagine the dramatic scenes played out in Baghdad transplanted to Pyongyang.
At the same time, the Bush administration's successful campaign in Iraq might lead it to be more magnanimous toward North Korea.
"The Iraq war has given the United States the psychological leeway to relax its requirements about talking to North Korea," said the South Korean official.
There has been a flurry of meetings in New York, Washington, Seoul, Pyongyang and Beijing recently -- most of them unpublicized -- on reopening diplomatic channels on the North Korean nuclear issue.
