Seoul pushes ahead with Korean talks
2003-04-26 15:53
Seoul - South Korea will push ahead with planned inter-Korean talks even after it apparently received confirmation from the United States that North Korea claimed it had nuclear weapons.
"We plan to push ahead with the high-level talks in Pyongyang," a spokesman of the unification ministry said.
A five-member delegation led by Unification Minister Jeong Se-Hyun will take a direct flight to Pyongyang on Sunday, he said.
Seoul said it wants to take advantage of the first inter-Korean talks since President Roh Moo-Hyun took office in February to press the North to abide by a 1992 declaration for denuclearising the Korean peninsula.
The South Korean government held a series of meetings to overview the progress of the Beijing talks also involving China after US envoy James Kelly briefed Seoul official on the talks that wrapped on Friday.
"South Korea and the United States find it meaningful that dialogue has started on the nuclear issue," said Lee Bong-Jo, policy director of the National Security Council (NSC).
"As North Korea has abandoned its ambiguous attitude of the past and made public its position clearly, the goal and paths of the (nuclear) talks have become easier to find," Lee said after an NSC meeting.
Another NSC official said after meeting Kelly that it seemed true that the North claimed it had nuclear weapons at the Beijing talks.
US officials said they would take a "good, hard look" at the claims to separate "bluster" from reality, stressing they still favour a diplomatic end to the nuclear showdown with the Stalinist state.
The US officials said North Korea told them at the talks that it had nuclear weapons, but a senior official said US television reports of Pyongyang having threatened to "test" the weapons were too simplistic.
US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said North Korea did make a proposal during the talks, but downplayed expectations it included a new initiative to end the crisis.
"We are not going to give a quid pro quo (for them to abandon) a nuclear weapons program that never should have existed in the first place," Boucher said, alluding to the US point that Pyongyang's nuclear aspirations were banned by a 1994 anti-nuclear pact.
South Korean officials were divided over whether the North's proposal, whose details are withheld from public, contains any new initiatives.
"The North might have not had enough time to present a new grandiose plan. My judgement is there is little surprise in that presentation," a senior government official was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.
But another NSC official said the North's proposal did contain "forward-looking" initiatives.
"We have to take a broad view of the situation, not a simplistic one," the official was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency. He noted that the United States proceeded with the talks without being panicked by the bombshell.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who according to unconfirmed reports opposed the Beijing talks, publicly backed President George W. Bush's policy towards Pyongyang.
US Asia envoy James Kelly, left Beijing after the talks, and headed for Tokyo and Seoul to brief close US allies on their outcome.
Though no new talks are planned, Washington has said it will push for including Japan and South Korea in the multilateral forum it wants to address the crisis. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA