World

North Korea Wants Money

March 7, 2001 / 2:17 PM EST / AP

North Korea, in its first response to a U.S. proposal to resume contact, said Monday that talks should begin with discussion of economic losses that Pyongyang blames on Washington.

President Bush this month ordered his foreign policy team to resume talks with the communist state, saying discussions should focus on North Korea's missile program and its massive deployment of troops near the border that bisects the Korean peninsula.

Nudging aside that proposed agenda, North Korea said Monday that talks should focus on the alleged U.S. failure to keep its end of a 1994 agreement under which the North froze its suspected nuclear weapons program.

The agreement requires a U.S.-led international consortium to provide North Korea with two power-generating light-water nuclear reactors by 2003. However, the $4.6 billion project has been delayed by financing and political tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Claiming that the delay is causing it a huge electricity loss, North Korea demanded compensation.

"The electricity loss from the delay in building light-water reactors should be taken up as a priority agenda in the talks," a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a radio broadcast monitored in Seoul.

The spokesman, who was not identified by name, also complained that Washington unilaterally set the agenda despite saying the proposed talks have no conditions attached.

"We cannot but evaluate the U.S. proposal as unilateral and conditional in its nature and hostile in its intentions," the spokesman said. "The U.S.-proposed agenda concerns our nuclear, missile and conventional armaments and this all is nothing but an attempt to disarm us."

The spokesman said any reduction or re-redeployment of North Korea's 1.1-million-member military cannot be discussed before the United States withdraws its military presence in South Korea.

The United States keeps about 37,000 troops in South Korea as a deterrent against a possible invasion by North Korea. The Korean peninsula has been divided since the end of World War II, and the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice.

South Korean officials said the North Korean response could set the stage for dialogue with the United States.

"By proposing its own agenda, North Korea has expressed its intentions to accept the U.S. offer of dialogue, although it is discontent with the U.S.-proposed topics," said Rhee Bong-jo, an assistant minister at Seoul's Unification Ministry.

Analysts in Seoul also saw the North's response as positive.

"The North Korean demand does not cloud the prospect of talks with the United States," said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korean affairs professor at Seoul's Dongguk University. "It is rather pragmatic, indicating that the North is prepared to negotiate with the U.S."

There was no immediate U.S. reaction.

On Wednesday, U.S. and North Korean officials met in New York to make arrangements for the possible resumption of talks, suspended in January while the Bsh administation reviewed U.S. policy regarding the communist state.

The United States described Wednesday's talks as "a good beginning to the dialogue process" and said they were expected to continue.

However, the United States has rejected previous North Korean demands for compensation, arguing that the 2003 date stipulated in the 1994 agreement was a target date, not a contractual date.

The 1994 agreement also requires the U.S.-led international consortium, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, to provide North Korea with 500,000 tons of fuel oil annually until the first reactor is built.

The United States says the fuel oil should be considered compensation for the delay in building the reactors.

North Korea suffers from an acute electricity shortage. Visitors say many of the communist country's factories are operating at less than 30 percent of capacity.