Powell, NKorean envoy to meet

2003-06-18 17:23

Phnom Penh - US Secretary of State Colin Powell met face-to-face with a North Korean envoy here on Wednesday to impress upon him the need for multilateral talks to end the eight-month deadlock over Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

The brief exchange - the first between Powell and a North Korean official since before the crisis erupted last year - occurred on the sidelines of an Asian security forum at which participants called for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, a senior State Department official said.

Powell shook hands with the envoy, ambassador at-large Ho Jong, and had a three-minute conversation during which the secretary reiterated the US position on such talks which he had made clear earlier in the Asean Regional Forum (ARF), the official said.

"Briefly, at the end of lunch, they bumped into each other, they shook hands and exchanged a few words," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

"The secretary said basically what he said in the meeting: we want multilateral discussions and that it's important to proceed in that fashion because the issues are of interest to everybody," the official said.

The official would not say what the envoy's response had been, but indicated it was similar to what the North Korean had said in his own presentation to the forum.

Nuclear deterrent

In that presentation, Ho, who was sent here in place of Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun, said that North Korea required a nuclear deterrent to prevent the United States from launching an attack, the official said.

Powell and the official both said that none of the other 22 participants - the 10 Asean members and the other 12 forum members - had been supportive of that position, noting the ARF had later issued a joint call for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

Powell noted that statement with satisfaction but continued to insist, as he had during the closed-door meeting, that Asean members keep the pressure on North Korea to drop its demand for bilateral talks with the United States and instead agree to multilateral discussions.

"Asean's help in keeping pressure on North Korea is absolutely necessary to achieve a diplomatic solution that leaves the peninsula, the region and the world safer," Powell told reporters at a news conference following the meeting.

"All of North Korea's neighbours have an interest in this," he said. "It is not a US-North Korea issue alone and we must not let the North Koreans try to isolate itself from the issues and, really, the equities of its neighbors."

Earlier at the ARF meeting, Powell told the forum that Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programmes affect "every nation in the region that would fall under the arc of a North Korean missile," according to a senior official.

"With respect to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction ... no issue is of greater urgency to us than North Korea's nuclear weapons programme," the official quoted Powell as saying.

He told the participants that the United States would not bend to North Korean "rhetoric" or "intimidation" and relent on its insistence that other countries be brought into the dialogue, according to the official.

"There is nothing the North Koreans can say to us that we will not share with our partners," the official quoted Powell as saying.

Multilateral forum

"And there is no proposal that will come from us without the concurrence of our partners. There is, therefore, no need for a bilateral dialogue.

"The sooner North Korea realises this and agrees to an expanded multilateral forum, the sooner we may find a way to solve this problem," Powell said, according to the official.

"We will not yield to attempted intimidation, rhetoric or North Korean claims of weapons progress."

But Washington's moves towards multilateral talks were summarily rejected by Communist North Korea in a foreign ministry statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

"It has become clear that the US insistence on multilateral talks is not to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully but to camouflage its act of isolating and stifling our country," a spokesperson said, according to a KCNA report carried by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

"We can no longer expect anything from multilateral talks that the United States is proposing."

Three-way meeting

North Korea has repeatedly demanded bilateral talks with the United States as the forum for any discussion of its weapons programmes, but Washington has refused, insisting that others be present.

In April, China hosted a three-way meeting with the United States and North Korea but Washington wants at least Japan and South Korea to be included in any future discussions.

Earlier, the Stalinist North reiterated its right to possess nuclear weapons and said it would never accept US pressure to disarm prior to negotiations.

"The US continued pressure on the DPRK (North Korea) to scrap its nuclear weapons programme first is intended to contain it with ease after forcing it to disarm itself," said Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers' Party newspaper.

"The Iraqi war proved that disarmament leads to a war. Therefore, it is quite clear that the DPRK can never accept the US demand that it scrap its nuclear weapons programme first."

However, Powell dimissed the notion that the United States was looking for conflict with North Korea, saying that Pyongyang's continued insistance that it was a "false claim," according to the senior official.

- AFX