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Nations to resume north Korea nuke talks
Talks on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program will resume next week, China said Thursday, even as Pyongyang raised a possible obstacle to progress by renewing its demands for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula.
Six-nation talks are due to resume Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said. Speaking at a regular news briefing, he appealed to all sides to be "flexible and practical" in trying to reach a settlement to the long-running dispute. The talks recessed Aug. 7 after the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia failed to agree on a statement of principles despite 13 days of negotiations. The main sticking point then was North Korea's insistence on its right to a civilian nuclear program. Washington says Pyongyang shouldn't be allowed any nuclear program, peaceful or otherwise, because of its record of broken promises. The talks were meant to resume in Beijing last week, but North Korea postponed that due to anger over U.S.-South Korean military exercises that were under way and Washington's appointment of a special envoy on North Korea's human rights. "The path to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is torturous and complicated," Qin said. "We can't resolve all the questions in just a few rounds of talks, but we should not be pessimistic about the process." The announcement came two days after North Korea reasserted its position, calling the idea it could yield to outside pressure and dismantle its atomic power industry "unimaginable ... without getting any proposal for compensating for the loss of nuclear energy." The North also urged the United States to acknowledge its "legitimate right to nuclear activity for a peaceful purpose and take an option to find a fair settlement of the nuclear issue." Also Thursday, Pyongyang demanded that the United States withdraw its troops from South Korea. North Korea has said it can't dismantle its nuclear program unless the United States drops its "hostile policy. The United States has countered that it has no intention of invading North Korea. The nuclear row broke out in late 2002 after U.S. officials said the North admitted having a secret nuclear program in violation of an earlier deal to abandon its weapons ambitions. The two Koreas technically remain in a state of war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The Rodong Sinmun, the North's main newspaper, claimed the United States is driving a "fire cloud of war" over the Korean Peninsula by positioning state-of-the-art military hardware in the South and preparing for a pre-emptive nuclear attack against the North. "If it is true that the U.S. has no intention to invade and has the stance to ensure peace on the Korean Peninsula and improve the relations with (North Korea), it should prove it in practice by making a decision for the withdrawal of its troops without delay," the newspaper said in a commentary carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. Thursday marked what North Korea called the 60th anniversary of U.S. troops' occupation of South Korea. Korea was divided after its liberation from Japan's colonial rule at the end of World War II in 1945, with U.S. forces stationed in the South and Soviet forces in the North. About 32,500 American troops are stationed in the South under a mutual defense treaty as a deterrent against threats from the North. But the South Korea said a recent U.S.-South Korean military exercise proved Washington was planning an invasion. The 12-day drill that ended this month was largely a computer-simulated war game that U.S. and South Korean officials said was purely defensive.
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