Ohio native visiting NKorea on UN mission
Jeffrey Feltman is the highest ranking United Nations official to visit North Korea in six years.
WASHINGTON – A western Ohio native who is a senior official at the United Nations was scheduled to meet with North Korean officials Tuesday in an effort to broker a diplomatic solution to Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them.
Jeffrey Feltman, undersecretary-general for political affairs at the United Nations, is the highest ranking United Nations official to visit North Korea in six years. The Greenville, Ohio, native’s visit to Asia included a stop Monday in Beijing, where he met with senior Chinese officials.
Stephane Dujarric, a United Nations spokesman, told reporters Monday that Feltman would discuss “issues of mutual interest and concern” with senior North Korean officials.
Feltman — a 1977 graduate of Greenville High School, northwest of Dayton, and a graduate of Ball State University who spent three decades in the U.S. foreign service — told the United Nations Security Council last month he has been an advocate of a diplomatic solution to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Last month after North Korea test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States, Feltman told the Security Council that “given the grave risks associated with any military confrontation,” the Security Council “needs to do all it can to prevent an escalation.”
“Unity in the Security Council is critical,” Feltman said. “Security Council unity also creates an opportunity for sustained diplomatic engagement — an opportunity that must be seized in these dangerous times to seek off-ramps and work to create conditions for negotiations.”
Feltman said North Korea’s “repeated nuclear and missile tests over the past two years have created great tension on the Korean Peninsula and beyond. This dynamic must be reversed. The solution can only be political.”