North Korea Resists Nukes Demands

Officials from North and South Korea have concluded four days of talks, during which North Korea's nuclear weapons program figured prominently.

During the talks, North Korea resisted an American and South Korean demand that it immediately end its nuclear weapons program, saying only that it will try to resolve the dispute through dialogue, South Korean pool reports said.

The delegates held a series of meetings in Pyongyang, the North's capital, seeking a last-minute deal and postponing the departure of a chartered plane at a Pyongyang airport to take the South Korean officials back to Seoul.

But North Korean negotiators would not give a firm commitment to honoring its agreements with the U.S., South Korea and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, which require it not to develop or possess nuclear weapons, the pool reports said, quoting an unnamed Southern delegate.

South Korean journalists said North Korean officials were reluctant to include in a joint statement any reference to the principle of negotiating a solution to the nuclear issue.

A chartered South Korean airplane arrived in the North's capital to take the South Korean officials back to Seoul, the reports said.

In Seoul, President Kim Dae-jung again urged North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons program, saying that it can never be "pardonable."

"It is a matter on which our national survival and world peace hinge," Kim said. "The North's development of weapons of mass destruction must be scrapped not only for our national security, but also for the coexistence of South and North Korea."

Rodong Sinmun, a state-run North Korean newspaper, said in an editorial that the United States should "opt for reconciliation and peace, not strong-arm policy."

"The U.S. is now calling for 'arms reduction' of the DPRK, making a hue and cry over its 'threat.' But such row does not stand to reason and it will get the U.S. nowhere," said the editorial, which was carried in English on KCNA, the North's news agency.

DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The three-day, Cabinet-level talks, which opened Sunday, were meant to discuss inter-Korean reconciliation but the North's nuclear issue took priority. No foreign journalists were allowed to cover the talks.

On Monday, the North's ceremonial head of state, Kim Yong Nam, said his country was ready to resolve the nuclear issue through dialogue as long as the United States withdraws its "hostile" policy toward the North.

The North's position was at odds with the United States, which views the communist country's nuclear weapons program as a nonnegotiable issue. Washington vows to muster international pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear ambition.

"I believe we can deal with this threat peacefully, particularly if we work together," President Bush said Monday.

South Korea believes dialogue is the best way to deal with concerns over the North's nuclear program. It is uneasy about the possibility of a new security crisis on the Korean peninsula, similar to one in 1994.

That crisis was resolved after North Korea signed a deal with the United States, pledging to freeze and eventually dismantle its suspected plutonium-based nuclear weapons program in return for construction of two modern, light-water reactors and 500,000 tons of fuel oil a year until the reactors are completed.

The latest crisis is over North Korea's confession to visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly on Oct. 3-5 that it has been secretly pushing a program to make nuclear weapons with enriched uranium.

In meetings with Kelly, North Korean officials said they consider the 1994 agreement invalid, because the reactors were several years behind schedule and were not expected to be completed by 2003 as promised.