N. Korea May Be Open To Nuke Talks

(AP)  North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a visiting Chinese envoy that his government will return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks if the United States shows sincerity and if certain conditions are met, the North's official news agency reported Tuesday.

The Korean Central News Agency did not elaborate on the conditions, but the report could indicate that North Korea would be ready to strike a deal with the United States on returning to the talks but that it might need further diplomatic coaxing to do that.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Lou Fintor said U.S. officials were aware of the report and that the United States is ready to resume the talks "without preconditions." Washington previously has opposed granting the North concessions merely for returning to the table.

Efforts to get North Korea back into the talks took on new urgency when Pyongyang flouted Washington and its allies on Feb. 10 with its unconfirmed declaration that it had built nuclear weapons, and that it would boycott further six-party talks.

Kim comments on the escalating standoff came during a meeting with a high-level envoy from China, his impoverished country's only remaining major ally.

Wang Jiarui, head of the Chinese Communist Party's International Department, traveled to Pyongyang to urge the North to return to the talks, which involve the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.

"We will go to the negotiating table anytime if there are mature conditions for the six-party talks thanks to the concerted efforts of the parties concerned in the future," Kim told the envoy, expressing hope that the United States would show "trustworthy sincerity and move," KCNA said.

In the talks with Wang, Kim also said that North Korea "would as ever stand for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and its position to seek a peaceful solution to the issue through dialogue remains unchanged," the news agency said.

North Korea previously has said it would return to the talks only if the United States drops its "hostile" policy toward the North. It has condemned U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's description of North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny," calling the remark evidence that Washington seeks a regime change in Pyongyang.

North Korea seeks to trade its nuclear weapons programs for massive economic aid, diplomatic recognition and a nonaggression treaty with Washington — measures that it hopes will guarantee the survival of Kim's Stalinist regime.

"The United States remains ready to resume the six party talks at an early date without preconditions," said Fintor, the State Department spokesman. "The six-party talks are the best way to resolve through peaceful diplomacy the international community's concerns about North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and to end the North's international isolation."

South Korean officials welcomed Kim's reported commitment to resolving the two-year-old nuclear standoff peacefully through six-party talks.

Kim's comments "remove the worst-case scenario, the further worsening of the situation, that we have been concerned about," said South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young in an interview with Seoul's MBC radio.

In his meeting with Kim, Wang relayed a message from Chinese President Hu Jintao, according to reports in KCNA and China's official Xinhua news agency.

Hu said it was in the "fundamental interests" of both China and North Korea to aim for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and to "settle the nuclear issue and clear the Korean side of its reasonable concerns through the six-party talks," KCNA said.

Xinhua said that China wants the six-party talks to be resumed at an early date and quoted Kim as saying that his country has never opposed the talks.

During three rounds of six-party talks in Beijing since late 2002, North Korea has demanded more aid and a peace treaty with Washington in exchange for giving up its nuclear program.

The talks have made little progress amid deep distrust between Washington and Pyongyang.

The United States wants a verifiable nuclear freeze and weapons dismantlement as part of any deal. North Korea says it remains convinced that Washington wants to topple its communist regime and it needs a nuclear deterrent.





By Sang-Hun Choe