The awaited bi-lateral talks between North Korea and the US has now officially begun, just don’t expect much from them though:

After a year of tensions, President Barack Obama is sending a veteran diplomat to North Korea on Tuesday for the highest-profile talks between Pyongyang and Washington since he took office pledging to reach out to America’s adversaries.

A key question is whether Stephen Bosworth can extract a firm commitment from Pyongyang to rejoin nuclear disarmament talks – whether North Korea is serious, this time, about peace on the peninsula.

Bosworth was scheduled to fly from a U.S. military base near Seoul to the North Korean capital Tuesday to see if the North will return to the international disarmament talks that it abandoned earlier this year.

Neither side has said which North Korean officials Bosworth will meet in Pyongyang during his three-day trip, though he is widely expected to sit down with Kang Sok Ju, the first vice foreign minister, who is considered the chief foreign policy strategist for reclusive leader Kim Jong Il.

“The main question is whether Bosworth will meet with Chairman Kim Jong Il,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Seoul’s Dongguk University. “Such a meeting would demonstrate that both the U.S. and North Korea intend to resolve the nuclear issue.”

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Monday that Bosworth is seeking a meeting with “appropriate officials,” but not with Kim Jong Il.

The State Department has said that the U.S. envoy has a narrow mission – to find out whether the North would return to the stalled disarmament talks – and would be carrying no inducements meant to lure the North back to the negotiating table.  [The Record]

The North Koreans have already made it very clear what they want just to return to talks.  There actually isn’t a whole lot for Bosworth to discuss since the North Koreans have no intention of denuclearizing and are just trying to get as many concessions as possible for little or nothing in return and they keep finding new suckers to play this game with them.

Here is what Victor Cha has to say about the meeting:

The U.S. agenda will most likely be to restate clearly the Obama administration’s desire to return to the Six-Party Talks and implementation of the 2005 denuclearization joint statement. The United States is unlikely to offer any new carrots or incentives to the DPRK to encourage a return to the agreement. There is very little appetite for that in Washington, especially after the May 2009 nuclear test. The objective remains to disable and destroy as much of the North’s nuclear program as quickly as possible.  [CSIS]

I still can’t believe that the Obama administration is naive enough to think the North Koreans want to denuclearize, so make sure to notice how Cha carefully crafted his words to say ” destroy as much of the North’s nuclear program as quickly as possible”.  I think this is an indication that the administration is conceding that the North Koreans will not denuclearize, but will maybe settle for small meaningless disarmament jestures like blowing up old decrepit cooling towers perhaps?