Panel Discussion: The Stalled Six-Party Talks and the North Korean Nuclear Issue

Event Date: Wednesday May 10, 2006
Time: 3:00–5:00 P.M.
Location: Pound Hall 335, Harvard Law School

Moderator:
Professor James K. Sebenius
Facilitator:
Cheng (Jason) Qian

THE SIX-PARTY TALKS created to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem have lost momentum again since last November. All six parties — North Korea, the US, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia — agreed on a denuclearization statement in September 2005. When the United States imposed sanctions on North Korean enterprises suspected of counterfeiting and money-laundering, however, Pyongyang declared that it would boycott future talks. As the focus of the talks gradually shifted from the substance of denuclearization to preventing the negotiation process itself from collapsing, agreement remains elusive. This raises the question: is this framework of six-party talks sustainable for achieving a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula?

Professor Graham T. Allison is the Director of the Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Kennedy School of Government. He was the Assistant Secretary of Defense during the first Clinton Administration.

Mr. Xiyu Yang is a visiting scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center of Stanford University. He was Director of the Office for the Korean Peninsula Issues in Chinese Foreign Ministry where he was in charge of issues relating to the six-party talks.

Professor James K. Sebenius (Moderator) is the first Gordon Donaldson Professor at Harvard Business School and co-founder of the Negotiation Roundtable, an ongoing forum on negotiation related subjects. He specializes in analyzing and advising on complex negotiations. His new book, 3-D Negotiation: Setup, Deal Design, and Tactics (Harvard Business School Press), will be published in September.

Cheng (Jason) Qian is a Fellow at the Harvard Negotiation Project.

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