Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/u-s-official-discusses-n-koreas-return-to-nuclear-talks Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript President Bush welcomed North Korea's decision to re-enter six-party negotiations regarding its nuclear program Tuesday, three weeks after a nuclear test and nearly a year after shunning the talks. State Department undersecretary Nicholas Burns discusses the next steps. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: North Korea's surprise decision to rejoin the nuclear talks. We hear from the number-three man at the State Department, Undersecretary Nicholas Burns. I talked with him this evening from the State Department.Mr. Secretary, welcome.NICHOLAS BURNS, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs: Thank you, Jim. JIM LEHRER: This decision today by North Korea to rejoin the talks, do you see it as a major development? NICHOLAS BURNS: Oh, it's certainly a major development. You know, we've gone through this extraordinary period with the North Koreans, of their missile tests on July 4th, of their nuclear test of a couple of weeks ago. And they decided that they wanted to have this meeting in Beijing with our ambassador, Chris Hill, and they decided that they would announce they're coming back to the six-party talks, so it's very big news.And we hope it will lead now to the North Koreans agreeing to implement the agreement that we negotiated with them, you remember, back in September of 2005, and that is to de-nuclearize the Korean Peninsula, to have the North give up its nuclear weapons, and to then have, we hope, a more normal relationship, if that's possible, in the future. JIM LEHRER: I'm curious about one thing. You say North Korea said this, and yet the announcement was made by the United States and China. North Korea still hasn't said anything officially about this. Can you explain that? NICHOLAS BURNS: Well, it's always hard to try to explain the behavior of the North Korean authorities. All I know is this: The Chinese government came to us last week and said that the North wanted to come back to six-party talks, they wanted a meeting today in Beijing, and they were willing to say at that meeting that they come back to the talks themselves, which is exactly what happened.And, of course, the official announcement was made by the host of the meeting, the Chinese government, and then our ambassador gave a press conference. I assume that the North Koreans will give their own press conference probably in their own good time. It's an erratic, unusual regime, but it is a regime we have to deal with if we want to see peace on the Korean Peninsula. And we certainly want to see them give up their nuclear weapons, which is the ultimate objective here.