Diplomats and experts in nuclear policy are already based in the Austrian capital, which could serve as a platform to advance the stalled talks<\/b>
\nAmid movement between Washington and Pyongyang on what US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently termed the \u201crapid denuclearisation\u201d of North Korea, former senior US diplomats involved in nuclear policy said a possible road to success could run through Vienna.
As part of his efforts to \u201cmark the beginning of negotiations to transform\u201d relations, Pompeo last month invited North Korean representatives to meet his special envoy, Stephen Biegun, in Vienna \u2013 home to the UN\u2019s nuclear weapon watchdog agency \u2013 \u201cat the earliest opportunity\u201d.
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The US is demanding a complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantling of North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapon programmes, and says sanctions will remain until that happens.
Last week the UN General Assembly meetings, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho criticised that approach. \u201cThe problem is that the continued sanctions are deepening our mistrust,\u201d he said.
A commentary carried by North Korea\u2019s official news agency on Tuesday suggested that Washington should lift sanctions; formally declare an end to the Korean war, which was halted by an armistice in 1953; and build mutual trust.
The US State Department has yet to announce any travels by Biegun to Vienna, where the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is based.
The envoy told the South Korean Yonhap news agency on Tuesday that he would accompany Pompeo to Pyongyang this weekend. It is a trip Pompeo described on Wednesday as \u201canother chance to continue to advance the commitment\u201d and \u201cbuild out a pathway for denuclearisation\u201d.
Thomas Countryman, former assistant secretary of state for international security and non-proliferation from 2011 to 2017, said that Biegun\u2019s future travel to Vienna \u201crepresents an opportunity for the two sides to work on these extremely complex issues and to make the kind of detailed agreement that will move us forward\u201d.
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After US President Donald Trump made the North Korean nuclear threat a top priority last year, Washington began diplomatic communication with Pyongyang through two major channels: official talks in New York and unofficial dialogues in third countries.
The former, known as the New York channel, is facilitated by North Korea\u2019s mission to the United Nations headquarters, in the absence of formal ties between the two countries. Through this channel, Pompeo met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un\u2019s right-hand man, Kim Yong-chol, in May and the country\u2019s foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, last month.
The latter channel, also called the Track 1.5 diplomacy, is used by American civil nuclear experts acting on behalf of the US government and North Korean diplomats in foreign territories.
Suzanne DiMaggio conducted such back-channel dialogue on behalf of the US with senior North Korean diplomat Choe Son-hui in May 2017 in Oslo, Norway. DiMaggio later told the South China Morning Post that the North Koreans were considering re-engaging in nuclear talks with the US.
Choe, who is now North Korea\u2019s vice-minister of foreign affairs, said the same, telling reporters in Beijing during her transit back to Pyongyang from Oslo: \u201cIf conditions are met, we will hold dialogue\u201d with the US.
Countryman said the New York channel and Track 1.5 diplomacy were primarily for communications, not negotiations.
\u201cThe New York channel is essentially for passing messages,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cTrack 1.5 involves non-government officials from the US side, and therefore that\u2019s not a point at which you can have negotiations on the key issues that are separating North Korea and the US.\u201d
Now it could be Vienna\u2019s turn to serve as a platform to advance the stalled talks.
Laura Holgate, US ambassador to the Vienna office of the United Nations and the IAEA from 2016 to 2017, said: \u201cI would certainly suggest that the North Korean diplomats who are based in Vienna are very well familiar with the details of [their country\u2019s] nuclear file\u201d.
North Korea maintains an embassy in Vienna. Kim Kwang-sop, the current North Korean ambassador, represents Pyongyang\u2019s interests to the United Nations and other international organisations based in the Austrian capital.
Holgate, now a vice-president of the Washington-based non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative, said she hoped Biegun would \u201ctake advantage of being there to spend some time with the IAEA\u201d to understand the scope and limit of the agency\u2019s capacities for supervising a possible denuclearisation deal.
North Korea joined the IAEA in 1974 but withdrew its membership in 1994. The agency and the North Korean embassy did not respond to emailed requests for comment about whether the two sides have been in contact.
The IAEA gained access to North Korea\u2019s Yongbyon nuclear facilities and conducted inspection and verification visits amid the six-party denuclearisation talks that began in 2003.
But in April 2009, under the rule of Kim Jong-un\u2019s father, Kim Jong-il, Pyongyang ceased cooperation with the agency, removing all IAEA seals from the Yongbyon facility and switching off surveillance cameras. IAEA inspectors subsequently left the country.
The following month, Pyongyang conducted an underground nuclear test at its Punggye-ri site, the same location where it claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb on September 3,2017.
In early June, as tensions on the peninsula begun to thaw after two inter-Korea summits and before the Kim-Trump meeting in Singapore, the director general of the IAEA told the agency\u2019s board that it was ready to resume nuclear verification activities in North Korea if circumstances allowed.
\u201cWe continue to enhance our readiness to play an essential role in verifying the DPRK\u2019s nuclear programme if a political agreement is reached among countries concerned,\u201d Yukiya Amano said.
But Holgate cautioned that the IAEA needed to design \u201can alternative verification process\u201d for North Korea.
She referred to a so-called South African model of denuclearisation, which would require \u201ca unilateral elimination of the weapons themselves before the IAEA got involved\u201d. But given the size and scope of North Korea’s nuclear programme, she said, that model would not be appropriate for Pyongyang.
\u201cThe IAEA could apply standard safeguards techniques to monitoring or destroying nuclear materials and facilities,\u201d Holgate said.
She added: \u201cI think it will be important for the people negotiating the deal to be really familiar with the limits of what IAEA can do when it comes to weapons themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n