N. Korean Military Seeks Talks With U.S.
North Korea's military proposed Friday holding direct talks with U.S. forces about forging a more permanent peace on the Korean peninsula, an unusual plea amid recent progress on the nuclear standoff between the two countries.
The North's Korean Peoples Army proposed the talks, also to be attended by a U.N. representative, "for the purpose of discussing the issues related to ensuring the peace and security on the Korean peninsula," the chief of the North Korean military's mission at the truce village of Panmunjom said.
"It is easy to miss a chance, but difficult to get it," the North warned in the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The plea comes amid rising hopes for a peace treaty to replace the 54-year-old Korean War armistice in light of progress on the nuclear issue. The North is expected to soon shut down its sole operating atomic reactor that generates plutonium for bombs in accordance with a February agreement with the U.S. and other regional powers.
Efforts to dismantle the nuclear program gathered pace Friday with the chief U.S. envoy saying he wants the communist country's reactor completely disabled by year's end and U.N. inspectors heading to Pyongyang to supervise the shutdown.
"We'd like to get full declaration (of all nuclear facilities) in a few months and disabling of the reactor by the end of the year," U.S. diplomat Christopher Hill said after arriving in Japan where he was to prepare for next week's talks on the North's disarmament.
Both Hill and the U.N. experts sounded upbeat about the recent flurry of activity, which includes South Korea's shipment of promised fuel oil to the North.
Meanwhile, the IAEA team was scheduled to arrive in Pyongyang on Saturday to arrange the next steps for deactivating the plutonium-producing reactor that has been the linchpin of the communist nation's nuclear weapons program and a longtime concern to its neighbors.
Under agreements to resolve the nuclear issue, the sides also pledged to start discussing a peace regime to replace the armistice that ended the 1953 Korean War. That cease-fire has never been replaced by a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula technically in a state of war.
Officers from the U.S. and North Korea have held general-level meetings since 1953, and lower-ranking officers also regularly consult at Panmunjom over administration of the cease-fire.
The North's latest request was noteworthy because it appeared to go beyond simple administrative talks on the cease-fire, as it noted it was ready to meet at "any place and at any time."
Kim Yong-kyu, a spokesman for the U.S. military in South Korea, said American officers were studying the North's statement.
But indicating that any further progress on detente will be difficult, the North's proposal came at the end of a lengthy statement criticizing Washington for stoking tension on the peninsula through the international standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
The military said that if U.S. pressure persists, implementing recent agreements on the nuclear issue would not be possible.
It added that the North also "will have no option but to exert utmost efforts for further rounding off the means for retaliatory strike strong enough to cope with the U.S. nuclear attack."