|
US rejects one-on-one North Korea talks
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-02-12 09:28 Arguing it was burned before in one-on-one talks
with North Korea, the United States said Friday it had no interest in resuming
direct discussions on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
The White House said it continued to support a six-nation process designed to
negotiate the elimination of North Korea's nuclear armaments.
But with that process stalled, administration officials were beginning to
discuss the possibility of referring the issue to the U.N. Security Council as
an alternate approach.
 North Korea's
spent nuclear fuel rods, kept in a cooling pond, are seen at the nuclear
facilities in Yongbyon, North Korea in this Dec. 1996 photo, released from
Yonhap News Agency Friday, Feb. 7, 2003. [AP] |
The objective there would be to impose international sanctions to persuade
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to abandon his weapons program.
In Sapporo, Japan, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi came down firmly
against that idea Friday. He said economic sanctions against the North could end
any possibility that Pyongyang might rejoin the six-nation talks and end any
chance of their success.
"I understand the feelings behind growing calls for economic sanctions, but
dialogue and pressure are important," Koizumi told reporters.
Han Sung Ryol, a senior North Korean diplomat at the United Nations, urged a
direct dialogue with the United States in an interview with a South Korean
newspaper.
But in a subsequent interview, he appeared to backtrack, telling Associated
Press Television News, "No, we do not ask for bilateral talks." He said the key
issue for North Korea was whether the United States planned to attack North
Korea.
The United States has said repeatedly in recent years that it has no such
plans and is intent on seeking a diplomatic solution.
On Thursday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry declared that the country had
produced nuclear weapons and said it was calling off participation in the
six-nation talks.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday the United States has no
interest in direct talks.
"It's not an issue between North Korea and the United States. It's a regional
issue," McClellan said, noting the six-party format includes China, South Korea,
Japan and Russia, in addition to the United States and North Korea itself.
At the State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called attention to the
unhappy outcome of a 1994 bilateral agreement with North Korea.
"When the U.S. and North Korea had direct negotiations to eliminate North
Korea's nuclear weapons program, we got a deal and then North Korea started
cheating on the deal very quickly, within a couple years," he said.
The agreement fell apart in 2002 when the Bush administration alleged that
North Korea had secretly begun a uranium enrichment program in violation of the
spirit of the 1994 agreement.
That in turn led to the six-party disarmament negotiations that began in
August 2003. Two subsequent rounds were held with little visible progress.
North Korea had been widely expected to resume the process early this year,
but Thursday's statement appeared to rule out that option for the time being.
An administration official, asking not to be identified, raised the
possibility of reviving an attempt begun in 2003 to place the issue before the
U.N. Security Council.
North Korea was put on the council agenda after it evicted U.N. nuclear
inspectors and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The council withheld action after the six-party process got under way. If the
council takes up the issue, that could lead to sanctions against North Korea.
The United States has been in touch with China, South Korea, Russia and Japan
about North Korea's opposition to renewing the multilateral talks. Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice will meet on Monday with South Korean Foreign Minister
Ban Ki-Moon. Japan's foreign and defense ministers will visit Washington Feb.
19.
Boucher said the United States and the four U.S. partners in the talks with
North Korea all agree the discussions should resume because they would give
North Korea "a chance to have a more normal relationship with the world."
If North Korea agrees to disarm in a verifiable way, it would receive
economic benefits from the United States and other countries.
Jack Pritchard, a Korea expert who left the State Department in 2003 because
of disagreement with U.S. policies, said North Korea may have decided against
resuming the six-party process because of the absence of positive U.S. signals
recently.
In the second Bush administration, "the lineup is looking pretty bleak" for
North Korea, Pritchard said. Rice included North Korea as one of six "outposts
of tyranny," during her confirmation hearing three weeks ago, Pritchard noted.
He also said North Korea may have concluded that keeping its nuclear weapons
may be the safest course. He pointed out that India and Pakistan have good
relations with the United States and other countries despite the nuclear testing
both carried out in 1998.
On the other hand, Pritchard said, the United States attacked non-nuclear
Iraq in 2003. The sequence of events, he said, may fall into the category of
"lessons learned" for North Korea.
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top World
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
