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Rice 'cautiously optimistic'
08/02/2007 19:30 - (SA)
Washington - US secretary of state
Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday she is cautiously optimistic
that it may be possible to begin carrying out a September 2005
agreement on ending North Korea's nuclear programmes.
"I think there may be - I am cautiously optimistic that we
may be able to begin, again, to implement the joint statement
of 2005 toward the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,"
Rice told a congressional panel.
Six-party talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia
and the United States resumed on Thursday in Beijing and South
Korean officials said North Korea was willing to take initial
steps towards ending its nuclear arms programme.
The talks in September 2005 produced an agreement under
which North Korea said it was committed "to abandoning all
nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes". In return, the
others held out economic, political and security incentives.
"I am, as I said, cautiously optimistic but I don't count
my chickens until they are hatched," Rice later told lawmakers
on the US senate foreign relations committee.
- Reuters
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