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Powell: U.S., North Korea will 'eventually' talk
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States will "eventually" talk with North Korea about the isolated communist nation's nuclear ambitions, but it will do so with the participation of other nations in the region, senior U.S. officials say. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that talking directly to North Korea would be a "bad practice" because the issue involved other nations in the region. In recent months, the North has kicked out U.N. nuclear inspectors, pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, warned that it might drop out of an armistice that stopped the 1953 Korean War and test-fired a missile one day before South Korea's new president was inaugurated. Washington said this month that North Korea had fired up a reactor believed capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. Although Washington says multilateral talks are the best way to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue, Pyongyang insists on a direct U.S.-North Korean dialogue. Powell noted that the United States held direct talks with North Korea in 1994, when it signed the Agreed Framework treaty in which Pyongyang promised to halt its nuclear program. "It turned out that that [deal] just became something that was parked as they went on to develop nuclear weapons through another technology," he said. "This time, we want a better solution, we want a solution that involves all the countries in the region. I hope North Korea understands that," Powell said, adding that it is in North Korea's interest for all the nations in the region be included in the dialogue. "And within this dialogue, we will be talking to the North Koreans," he said. Reinforcing the Powell line, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told ABC television that the U.S. wasn't afraid to talk to North Korea. "But we need to do so in a way that will bring maximum pressure on North Korea to actually this time not just freeze its weapons of mass destruction, but begin to dismantle them," she said. Any incentives for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program "will come from the collective weight of the international community, not just from the United States alone," she said. North Korea, for its part, continued to assert Sunday that the United States was planning a pre-emptive nuclear strike against it. The North's official Korean Central News Agency said the U.S. Department of Defense was mapping out a plan including "not only cruise missile strikes and massive air raids, etc., but the use of tactical nuclear weapons." The North's "army and people will take every possible self-defensive measure to cope with the U.S. bellicose forces' new war moves," it said. U.S. President George W. Bush has referred to North Korea as a member of an "axis of evil," along with Iraq and Iran, but has repeatedly denied that the United States has any plans to take military action against the reclusive state. The United States began deploying 12 B-1 and 12 B-52 bombers last week to its base on Guam, about 3,200 kilometers [1,988 miles] from North Korea. "These moves indicate that the U.S. Air Force is taking the lead in implementing the U.S. imperialists' strategy to mount a pre-emptive attack on [North Korea]," the North said. Pentagon officials say the move is designed to send a non-threatening message to North Korea not to take advantage of the situation in Iraq and assume the U.S. military is distracted by events in the Persian Gulf. (Bomber message) Meanwhile, U.S. officials demanded that Pyongyang dismantle its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon during unofficial talks in Germany last month, a Japanese newspaper reported Sunday. U.S. diplomats also called for Pyongyang to allow U.N. monitors to verify that it wasn't enriching uranium for its purported nuclear weapons program during the meetings at the North Korean Embassy in Berlin on February 20-21, the Asahi newspaper reported. North Korea rejected the demands, and the meetings ended in disagreement, the paper said, citing an unidentified former U.S. official who attended the meeting. Pyongyang had proposed a visit by U.S. nuclear inspectors, it said. In other developments, North Korea has indicated it might conduct another short-range missile test in the Sea of Japan. Potential threatU.S. officials tell CNN they believe North Korea will conduct another test of its KN-01 short-range anti-ship missile, which is under development. Although the planned missile test would not breach any international agreements, it would add to the increasing tensions in the region. The KN-01 is the same missile that was tested several weeks ago, and the test is expected to also occur over the Sea of Japan in the same area as the last test. Both the U.S. and Japan are wary of North Korea's missile development. The CIA warned Congress last month that North Korea had a long-range missile capable of hitting the continental United States. Within East Asia, the potential threat has led Japan to consider its missile-defense options. Tokyo has also said it could launch pre-emptive military action if there was evidence that a North Korean missile strike was likely. The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.
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