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US, North Korea call on each other to give ground
(AP)
Updated: 2005-08-08 09:45
The United States and North Korea urged each other to make concessions as
deadlocked disarmament talks entered a three-week recess, with one envoy warning
that an agreement could still be out of reach when talks resume, AP reported.
The adjournment came after 13 days of talks failed to produce a statement of
principle to guide renewed negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to
renounce nuclear weapons. The delegations said the six-nation talks would resume
the week of August 29.
The U.S. envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, said talks
stalled over the North's demand for the statement to include a promise that it
be given a nuclear reactor. He said all five other delegations rejected that.
"We decided it was time to end it and go to recess, with the idea that they
can go back and think about what they've been told, which is, they're not going
to get a light-water reactor," Hill told reporters Sunday.
He expressed hope North Korea would drop the demand once its envoys explained
the rejection, saying, "Perhaps people back in Pyongyang need to hear it
directly."
But the North's chief envoy, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, said that
during the recess Washington should "change its policy on not letting us have
any kind of nuclear activities."
The dispute is "one of the very important elements that led us to fail to
come up with an agreement," Kim said at a news conference in the North Korean
Embassy. He did not mention the reactor cited by Hill.
During the recess, the six governments "are supposed to maintain contact and
consultations," said China's chief delegate, Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei. But
he warned that even after they return from the recess, "I can't say for sure
that we will reach agreement."
North Korea says that in exchange for renouncing nuclear weapons, it wants
economic and energy aid, a peace treaty and normalized relations with
Washington. It also wants the United States to remove any "nuclear threat" of
its own from the Korean Peninsula.
The United States has some 32,500 military personnel in South Korea, but
Washington says no nuclear weapons are deployed there and it has no intention of
invading the North.
Hill said North Korea also wants its negotiating partners to provide a
nuclear reactor to "demonstrate our commitment to their right to eventual
civilian use" of nuclear technology.
A light-water reactor was promised to the North in the 1994 deal as part of a
U.S. aid package, but Hill said that reactor "is simply not on the table"
anymore. He has cited the North's conversion of a reactor at Yongbyon that
supposedly was built for research into one that Washington says can make
material for atomic bombs.
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