North Korea and the nations bargaining to rid it of nuclear weapons could widen their talks to energy and Asian regional security issues, the top U.S. nuclear negotiator said Tuesday.
The six-nation disarmament talks have improved relations among Asian neighbors and could be a template for a wider Asian security organization, said Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill. He suggested the group could be expanded to include other nations and would outlive the current, unresolved effort to take North Korea out of the nuclear weapons business, the AP reported.
The United States, Russia, China, South Korea, North Korea and Japan are "trying to deal with some of the causes of conflict in the region, trying to deal with the difficulty of relations among states in the region," Hill said, and they seek "a sort of lasting mechanism for peace and security."
Asia has no equivalent to NATO in the West, and few other formal defense and security arrangements among Asian nations. The United States has separate security arrangements with Asian allies and friends such as South Korea and Taiwan.
The idea of an "Asian NATO" is not new, although a future security organization in northern Asia along the lines Hill suggested would almost certainly not carry the treaty obligations of NATO. A chief advantage to the United States would be clearer communication with China, the regional military heavyweight.
"We don't want to make progress on the nuclear issue and then have the issue of creating a neighborhood in the region, have progress on that fall behind," Hill said. "We want to make sure that relations among states are left better off as a result of our efforts to deal with the nuclear issue."
Hill, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was not specific about the future structure or agenda of what is now called the six-party talks. He said a wider agenda is not an alternative to finishing the job in North Korea.
"The more we deal with this, the more we believe in the six-party process and believe in its ability not only to deal with the immediate task at hand," Hill said.
Hill gave a generally upbeat assessment of progress toward getting North Korea to abandon its weapons following Pyongyang's handover of a lengthy nuclear dossier last week. He said the other five nations are now figuring out how to make sure the North isn't hiding other nuclear secrets.