The Bush administration said yesterday that North Korea should not be offered any incentives to return to six-party talks on its nuclear program and that Washington is working to counter Pyongyang’s “illicit activities.”
South Korean officials, meanwhile, were quoted as saying they had proposed a new round of high-level military talks with the reclusive state.
“We and the others agree that this is not the moment to start changing the playbook,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
North Korea officially pulled out of the six-party discussions — which include the United States, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia — on Thursday. It blamed Washington’s “policy to isolate and stifle” it.
“They had originally promised to come back to talks in September, and this continued delay by North Korea should not be the reason to offer them further rewards,” Mr. Boucher said.
“It remains fundamental, though, that the talks are the place to solve the issues, and we remain committed to that,” he said.
Mr. Boucher also said that U.S. authorities, in collaboration with other governments, are trying to counter illegal international activities by North Korea, such as narcotics and smuggling activities, counterfeiting and proliferation of weapons technology.
“We have been aware for some time of North Korea’s illicit activities,” he said. “They have been a concern to the United States and other nations for decades.”
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met yesterday with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, who suggested that Pyongyang’s claim to possess nuclear weapons may be simply a bluff.
Nevertheless, he said, “we agreed to intensify our efforts among the parties concerned” in the six-nation talks.
Mr. Boucher said that, “for a long time now, the United States has assumed that North Korea has been able to produce enough material for nuclear weapons.
“Therefore, the premise of our policy all along has been the prospect, the probability, that they, in fact, had nuclear weapons,” he said.
On Friday, after Pyongyang’s statement made headlines around the world, officials in Seoul reached out to North Korea by offering military talks.
“We proposed by a telephone message on Feb. 11 to hold the third round of generals’ talks as soon as possible,” South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted a Defense Ministry official as saying.
If such a meeting takes place, it would be the third since last year, when generals from the two countries agreed to ease military tensions on the peninsula, which was divided after the 1950-53 Korean War.
The North Korean Foreign Ministry said Thursday in a statement issued in English by its official Korean Central News Agency: “We … have manufactured nukes to cope with the Bush administration’s ever more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle [North Korea].”
“Nuclear weapons will remain [a] nuclear deterrent for self-defense under any circumstances,” the ministry said.
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