| ||
| ||
| ||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Seoul agrees to talks with N Korea
SEOUL, South Korea -- The South Korean Ministry of Unification has accepted a North Korean proposal for direct talks to be held next Sunday between cabinet-level officials in Pyongyang. Talks involving North Korea, China and the United States concerning the North's alleged nuclear weapons program are already scheduled for Wednesday this week in Beijing, China. South Korea's Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun accepted the North Korean offer in a telephone message Monday, his office said according to Associated Press. The two Koreas had initially agreed to hold the Cabinet-level talks early this month. But those talks were canceled after North Korea failed to confirm them. Last month, North Korea canceled two other working-level talks. The status of the Beijing talks has been the subject of some doubt following reported comments late last week that North Korea had begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods, an action which is usually associated with developing weapons-grade nuclear material. A South Korean Foreign Ministry said on Monday the Beijing talks were likely to go ahead but a U.S. spokesperson on Sunday would not confirm that. "The talks are likely to go ahead as scheduled," a South Korean Foreign Ministry official told Reuters. He asked not to be identified by name. Earlier in the United States, President George W. Bush said there was a "good chance" diplomatic pressure would succeed in coaxing Pyongyang to end its suspected nuclear weapons programs. "China's policy is for a nuclear-weapons-free peninsula, and now that they are engaged in a process, it makes it more likely it's going to occur," Bush said Sunday. "You've got the United States adhering to that posture, you've got China adhering to that posture. South Korea believes that the peninsula ought to be nuclear weapons-free," Bush said. "Japan strongly believes that. And I believe that all four of us working together have a good chance of convincing North Korea to abandon her ambitions to develop nuclear arsenals." But Bush, when asked about the talks Sunday, did not directly address whether they will take place. A Bush spokeswoman said afterward that the president's reference to China's involvement should not be taken as an indication the talks are definitely on, Associated Press reports. Consultations with allies in the region continue and no final decision has been made, deputy press secretary Claire Buchan said. The United States has insisted on a multilateral approach to defuse the nuclear standoff, rather than the direct U.S.-North Korea engagement that Pyongyang had been demanding. The United States believes North Korea already has one or two nuclear bombs and can extract enough plutonium from the fuel rods to make several more within months. A North Korean government statement indicating it could soon have enough plutonium for several nuclear weapons was the result of a botched translation, U.S. officials said Friday. A statement issued in English earlier in the day by the state-run Korea Central News Agency said North Korea was in the final stages of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods. The original translation issued by KCNA said North Korean technicians "are successfully reprocessing more than 8,000 spent fuel rods at the final phase." Allegation deniedBut the actual message was somewhat different as translated by Federal Broadcast Information Service from the original KCNA press release in Korean. That translation read: "We are successfully completing the final phase to the point of the reprocessing operation for some 8,000 spent fuel rods." The confrontation between Washington and Pyongyang became public in October, when the United States accused North Korea of secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program despite a 1994 agreement to freeze those efforts. North Korean officials admitted to the program, U.S. officials said. North Korea denied the allegation, saying it was restarting a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon solely to provide electricity to the impoverished nation. Since then, North Korea kicked out U.N. nuclear inspectors, restarted several nuclear facilities that had been mothballed and warned of war on the Korean Peninsula unless U.S. officials agreed to meet with it. U.S. officials say there is no peaceful purpose to reprocessing spent fuel rods. Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
