N. Korea Wants Talks With U.S.

[David]

AP


North Korea has demanded bilateral talks with the United States to defuse the tension created by its announcement that it is a nuclear power, the communist state's U.N. envoy said in a South Korean newspaper interview published Friday.

Han Sung Ryol, a senior diplomat at North Korea's U.N. delegation in New York, was the first North Korean official to speak to outside news media since Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry defied the United States and its allies by declaring Thursday that it has nuclear weapons as a deterrent again a U.S. invasion and doesn't intend to join six-nation disarmament talks any time soon.

"We will return to the six-nation talks when we see a reason to do so and the conditions are ripe," Han told Seoul's Hankyoreh newspaper in a Thursday interview in New York. "If the United States moves to have direct dialogue with us, we can take that as a signal that the United States is changing its hostile policy toward us."

Han's suggestion came as the two-year-old standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs plummeted to a new chill with Pyongyang's statement Thursday.

It's a long-running North Korean strategy to try to engage the United States in bilateral talks even as it keeps six-nation talks open, believing such meetings would boost the isolated country's international status and help it win bigger concessions. In the current six-nation talks, North Korea has increasingly found itself surrounded by countries, including its allies China and Russia, who are critical of its nuclear ambitions.

The United States has refused to engage in bilateral talks.

Governments around the world have expressed concern over North Korea's nuclear statement and urged it to return to talks on ending its nuclear ambitions in return for economic and diplomatic benefits. But North Korea says it won't do so as long as Washington maintains its "hostile" policy toward the North.

"The key is a change in the hostile U.S. policy toward the North," Han was quoted as saying. "We have no other option but to regard the United States' refusal to have direct dialogue with us as an intention not to recognize us and to eliminate our system."

Hopes for the resumption of talks rose after U.S. President George W. Bush began his second term without using harsh words against the Stalinist regime in key speeches. But Pyongyang said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's labeling last month of it as one of the "outposts of tyranny" was insult enough to scuttle the diplomatic process.

North Korea interpreted that Bush's recent emphasis on spreading freedom and ending tyranny around the world "effectively targeted" North Korea, Han said. "Although Bush didn't mention our country by name, the context makes it clear that there is a strong connection with" the comments by Rice, he said.

Earlier Friday, South Korea urged the United States and its allies to be calm following North Korea's sudden declaration it is a nuclear power, reminding them that blustering and brinksmanship are nothing new in Pyongyang's toolbox of diplomatic tactics.

North Korea shocked the world with its announcement Thursday, its clearest declaration yet that it has nuclear weapons.

"We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's ever-more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North)," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in an English statement carried Thursday by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

South Korean officials cautioned Friday about further steps by North Korea that could notch up the tension ? such as shipping weapons materials to other countries with nuclear ambitions or even testing a bomb.

The North's announcement and its decision to pull out of six-nation disarmament talks was "a matter of grave concern," South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Washington, where he arrived on a previously scheduled trip to meet U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

But it is important to remember that "North Korea has shown similar attitudes in times of crucial negotiations" in the past, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted him as saying.

"We need to calmly analyze the situation," Ban said, noting the North's commitment to "solve the issue through dialogue and negotiations."

In Seoul, Vice Foreign Minister Lee Tae-shik told members of the ruling Uri party that "the North's move appears to be aimed at improving its negotiating power."

But he warned "the problem could get very serious if North Korea takes additional actions," according to Uri Party spokesman Lim Jong-suk.

Since the nuclear crisis erupted in late 2002, North Korea has steadily increased stakes in the standoff. It first removed U.N. seals on its mothballed nuclear facilities, expelled the last U.N. nuclear monitors, then quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and later said it had completed reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods to extract weapons-grade plutonium.

South Korea's take on what experts label North Korea's "bombshell announcement" reflects its decades-long experience in dealing with North Korean officials, who pepper their negotiating rhetoric with shouts, threats and dire warnings of imminent clashes.

Since 2003, the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia have held three rounds of talks in Beijing, but no significant progress has been made.

[Robert Ryan]

Talk about what, threaten to start a war. I was in Korea in Aug 1975 when two officers were axed to death over a stupid tree in the peace village. Our retaliation to this travesty was to blow up the tree down. (President Carter's show of force).

[phuloi]

What North Korea wants from us is money,pure and simple.The Clinton administration funneled billions into the people`s republic,along with nuclear technology,in order to appease Kim and his henchmen which,for all practical purposes,built his arsenal.President Bush,to his credit will not be held hostage to the continued sabre rattling and has told the Kim regime to go piss up a rope.

[revwardoc]

What I can't believe is that there isn't at least one person high up enough in that administration to see that Kim Jong Il is a complete madman and is bringing the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust. The best solution to that problem is a bullet to that idiot's brain.