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China, US agree on North Korea nukes
(Agencies/Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-02-19 01:19
SEOUL, South Korea - The United States and China agree that North Korea
must end its nuclear ambitions and resolve the standoff through six-nation
talks, Washington's top envoy on the issue said Friday, as efforts to restart
the negotiations gained momentum.
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| Song Min-soon,
South Korea's deputy foreign minister, answers a reporter's question at
Incheon International Airport after arriving from Beijing February 18,
2005. [Reuters] | Reviving the stalled talks has
taken on greater urgency since North Korea's explosive but unconfirmed
declaration last week that it has become a nuclear power. The talks involve the
two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
North Korea "has made a big mistake in developing these nuclear programs ...
and we are to help them overcome this mistake," U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said
in Seoul after a visit to Beijing Thursday to meet with Chinese officials.
"But to help them, they are going to have to help themselves, and the first
issue they need to do is coming to the table," said Hill, who is also U.S.
ambassador to South Korea.
Hill, who was appointed envoy for the nuclear talks Monday, said he and
Chinese officials were in "absolute agreement on the need for North Korea to
come back to the process."
China announced Thursday it would send a top Communist Party official to
North Korea this week, although it did not give an exact date for the trip by
Wang Jiarui, head of the party's international department.
Washington hopes China will use its economic influence on North Korea to
persuade it to stop developing nuclear weapons.
North Korea says it is boycotting the talks until Washington abandons what it
calls a hostile policy toward the North.
President Bush on Thursday said diplomacy was the right strategy.
"Now is the time for us to work with friends and allies who have agreed to be
part of the process to determine what we're jointly going to do about it," he
said at a news conference in Washington.
China has hosted three inconclusive rounds of six-nation talks since 2003.
North Korea refused to attend a fourth round, scheduled for last September.
Confronting its own nuclear issues, South Korea on Friday said it will enact
a new law to tighten controls over nuclear activities after secret experiments
by South Korean scientists embarrassed the country last year.
The Ministry of Science and Technology will complete a draft this month and
present a bill to the National Assembly in May, a government statement said.
The bill "aims to help prevent nuclear materials from being diverted for use
in nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices," the statement said. "It
will also outlaw any development of nuclear weapons by the government, groups or
individuals and support for such activities."
South Korea is a signatory to international treaties that forbid the
development of nuclear weapons. But the country's nuclear activities came under
scrutiny last year when it admitted that its scientists conducted plutonium and
uranium experiments in 1982 and 2000.
In November, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency
criticized the country for the experiments but refrained from taking tougher
measures, including referral to the U.N. Security Council.
Although plutonium and enriched uranium are two main elements of nuclear
weapons, an IAEA report said there was no evidence that the experiments were
applied to an arms program. South Korea has repeatedly said the experiments were
unauthorized and were for scientific research only.
But North Korea accused the U.N. nuclear watchdog and the United States of
applying "double standards" and giving "tacit approval" to South Korea to pursue
a nuclear weapons program.
Also, South Korea said it will begin sending electricity across its heavily
armed border with North Korea next month to power a joint-venture industrial
park despite heightened nuclear tensions.
The industrial complex in Kaesong, a North Korean town just north of the
mine-strewn border, is the best known among the handful of joint economic
ventures between the two countries.
DPRK willing to resume nuclear talks when conditions met
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is willing to return to
talks in any form if some conditions are met, a South Korean newspaper reported
on Saturday, quoting a DPRK representative to the United Nations.
In a telephone interview with the JoongAng Daily, the DPRK's deputy
representative to the United Nations Han Song Ryol called on the United States
to promise peaceful coexistence and noninterference in his country's internal
affairs as a precondition for returning to the negotiating table.
"If these conditions are met, we are willing to attend talks in any form,
including the six-party talks," he told the JoongAng Daily, one of three most
influential newspapers in South Korea.
Han added that it was the main point of the Feb. 10 statement by the DPRK's
Foreign Ministry in which Pyongyang declared that it suspended participation in
the six-party talks on the nuclear issue for an "indefinite period."
"We have no way back now," he said, noting the country has been compelled to
arm itself with nuclear weapons.
"But if the US abandons its hostile policy, we can also drop the
anti-American policy. And then why do we need nuclear weapons?" Han said.
The nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula erupted in October 2002, when a
senior US official said Pyongyang had told him it had a secret uranium-enriching
program to make weapons.
In early 2003, the DPRK announced withdrawal from the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty and claimed that it had reactivated its nuclear
facilities.
The DPRK, South Korea, China, the United States, Russia and Japan have held
in Beijing three rounds of six-party nuclear talks aimed at peacefully resolving
the nuclear issue.
However, citing US hostile policy, Pyongyang refused to attend the fourth
round of the talks scheduled for September 2004.
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