U.S. Urges U.N. Role In Korea Crisis

As South Korea pushed ahead with efforts to resolve peacefully a nuclear standoff with North Korea, the Bush administration said Friday the U.N. Security Council must step in.

North Korea, which pledged in 1994 to freeze development of plutonium-based nuclear weapons, has admitted it is working on nuclear arms based on uranium. It also has announced it would quit the landmark 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

"This is a serious matter, and we think the Security Council needs to take up the issue because it's a matter involving international peace and security," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

The United States has been in close consultation with Russia, China, France and Britain, all permanent members of the council, and with Australia, Japan and South Korea, Boucher said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is required to report to the Security Council any failure to comply with safeguards against the spread of nuclear technology, "and we would expect them to do that," he said.

South Korea kept up the diplomatic pressure on its northern neighbor Friday, announcing it will send two envoys to the communist state next week for a new round of negotiations.

Seoul, however, was unable to persuade North Korean delegates at talks earlier Friday to commit to specific steps to ease the nuclear tensions with the United States.

South Korea urged direct dialogue to bridge the differences between Washington and Pyongyang, and the South's president-elect said he would propose a summit with reclusive Northern leader Kim Jong Il after taking office next month.

The United Nations nuclear agency, meanwhile, announced it will hold an emergency meeting to consider putting the dispute before the Security Council, spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said in Vienna Friday.

Formally notifying the Security Council that North Korea had breached its obligations under international nuclear accords could lead to economic sanctions or other punitive measures against Pyongyang. North Korea has said sanctions would amount to a declaration of war.

In a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi in Tokyo, Undersecretary of State John Bolton said a debate on North Korea in the United Nations would not necessarily mean that sanctions would be imposed.

"The question of getting the matter into the Security Council is an entirely separate and very different question from whether or not sanctions at some point might be warranted," Bolton said at a news conference.