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Pyongyang: Talks possible if US promises coexistence
(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2005-02-20 09:54
A senior Chinese Communist
Party official held talks with leading North Korea officials on Saturday, amid
China's increasing mediating efforts to engage Pyongyang to the 6-party nuclear
talks.
North Korean top
leader Kim Jong-il (centre) meets with Mira Koltsova, head of the Russian
state academy Beriozka dancing troupe, in Pyongyang February 17, 2005.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has made his first appearance before the
general public in two months.
[Reuters] |
North Korea, which declared to the
world it had nuclear bombs, stressed that conditions were not right to resume
six-party negotiations involving the two Koreas, the United States, China,
Russia and Japan.
It said that so long as the United States agrees not to militarily invade it
and do not meddle its internal affairs, North Korean government will immediately
resume the talks.
Deputy North Korean Ambassador Han Song-ryol told the South Korean JoongAng
Ilbo newspaper that the North wanted a U.S. assurance that there would be
substantive results from negotiations.
"If the United States withdraws its hostile policy, we will drop our
anti-U.S. policy and become allies, and why would we then need nuclear weapons?"
Han said.
Wang Jiarui, head of the Chinese Communist Party's international liaison
department, held talks in Pyongyang with Kim Yong-nam, president of Communist
North Korea's Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, Xinhua news agency
said.
"The two sides exchanged views on bilateral relations and inter-party
contacts, as well as regional and global issues of common concern," Xinhua said.
Before leaving for North Korea, Wang said the fate of the stalled talks would
be up for discussion.
China said this week it was committed to the six-party process and that
putting pressure on Pyongyang was not a solution. Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesman Kong Quan has urged the two major parties in the dispute, Washington
and Pyongyang, to show their respective “sincerity and flexibility”, in order to
make the 6-party Beijing talks moving, and attain tangible results.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei said he did not expect a quick return
to the talks, considering the current impasse and intransigency of the two major
talk parties.
"It is unlikely the six-party talks will be resumed in the near future," he
told state television. "But all parties concerned, including China, are
conducting consultations with each other positively."
North Korea, described by Bush as part of an "axis of evil" along with Iran
and Iraq, said for the first time last week it had nuclear weapons, arguing it
needed them to deter a hostile United States.
"Because the United States insists on its hostile policy toward the DPRK
(North Korea) and refused to co-exist with the DPRK ... the DPRK has no
justification to conduct talks on the nuclear issue of the Korean peninsula with
the United States now," a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as
saying on Saturday.
He reiterated North Korea's suspension of involvement in the six-party talks
"for an indefinite period" but said its policy of solving the nuclear issue
through dialogue remained unchanged.
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