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N. Korea hints at re-opening stalled talks
China and South Korea have called on North Korea to come back to stalled six-party talks aimed at ending its nuclear programs, while Pyongyang hinted it might be seeking a way to do just that. Chinese President Hu Jintao and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, in Moscow to attend commemorations marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe, called for a peaceful resolution of the crisis through dialogue.
In comments late on Sunday, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said Pyongyang wanted to meet U.S. officials to confirm reports Washington was ready to recognize the North as a sovereign state and hold bilateral talks with the United States in the framework of six-country talks, the official KCNA news agency reported. The comment appeared to soften the North's position of rejecting talks outright for now, although it still said it could not deal with the United States while it called Pyongyang an “outpost of tyranny” -- a label given to North Korea by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in January. Diplomats and analysts note North Korea has in the past sought a face-saving way back to the table. "Our will to denuclearise the Korean peninsula and seek a negotiated solution to it still remains unchanged," the spokesman was quoted as saying. North Korean and U.S. officials have met in the past at the United Nations, using the so-called "New York channel". The six-party talks bring together host China, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the United States. "We have never requested the DPRK-US talks independent of the six-party talks," the spokesman said. The North has in the past said direct talks with Washington were the only way to proceed. DPRK is short for the formal name of the country, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Over the past few months Pyongyang has said it cannot negotiate with top officials from the Bush administration, but has also said it could return to the table if conditions were right and Washington dropped what Pyongyang says is a “hostile policy” towards it. An official from South Korea's presidential Blue House said that Roh and Hu agreed during a 50-minute meeting to increase high-level diplomatic efforts to resume the stalled talks. "The two leaders expressed deep concern over the current impasse in the six-way talks and the uncertainties the impasse has been causing," the official told reporters in Moscow, according to the Blue House statement released on Monday. Nearly a year has passed since a third round of talks. North Korea declared in February it had nuclear weapons and would stay away from the talks indefinitely, intensifying a crisis that began in 2002 over what Washington said was its enrichment of uranium that could be used to make weapons. Hu urged all parties to try to re-open the six-party talks to make sure the issue stays on the course of peaceful resolution through dialogue. Talk of 6 N. Korea nuke bombs worries US
A UN atomic agency estimate that North Korea could have six nuclear weapons ratcheted up Washington's worries that North Korea may test a bomb as early as next month. CNN television Sunday asked International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei if North Korea had as many as six nuclear weapons. "I think that would be close to our estimation," he said.
"We knew they had the plutonium that could be converted into five or six North Korea weapons. "We know that they had the industrial infrastructure to weaponize this plutonium. We have read also that they have the delivery system." ElBaradei's comments came two days after the New York Times reported that US officials familiar with satellite and intelligence data believed North Korea was building a reviewing stand and filling in a tunnel, signs of a potential underground nuclear test. North Korea declared on February 10 that it had developed nuclear weapons to defend itself from the United States. However, the pace of events picked up this week, with press and IAEA reports on North Korea's nuclear weapons and delivery capabilities. As recently as April 29, the Pentagon referred to North Korea's ability to arm a long-range missile with a nuclear warhead as "theoretical." US Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, urged North Korea to return to the six-party talks. The threat of a nuclear test "is the only card they have to play," the Kansas senator told CNN. "I think basically that (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-Il believes this is his card to play to stay on the world stage to make demands." However, Democratic California Senator Dianne Feinstein said it was not too late for US officials to meet North Korean demands for bilateral meetings instead of the six-way talks and said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should be involved. "I think Kim Jong-Il wants this dialogue. I see no reason, I see no harm in sitting down (at) the table with him and seeing if we can't change his direction," she told CNN. President Bill Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, said the United States had missed opportunities to defuse the showdown earlier, "I'm very concerned about the box that we are now in with North Korea." The stakes are high and the threat is real, former acting CIA director John McLaughlin said. "This is one of the few countries in the world that is hostile to the United States and developing and has in its possession missiles that have an intercontinental capability," he said. A North Korean test would cause "a lot of insecurity fallout," ElBaradei said. "The impact on the whole East Asian and Japan, South Korea is tremendous." |
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