N.Korea nuclear talks at a crossroads

N.Korea nuclear talks at a crossroads

By BURT HERMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BEIJING-The main U.S. envoy on North Korea's nuclear program said Sunday that arms negotiations had reached a "fork in the road" between diplomacy and sanctions, and called for progress at the six-party talks set to resume following a 13-month hiatus.

Negotiators were gathering to discuss how to implement a September 2005 agreement, the only accord ever reached at the multiparty talks. At that time, the North pledged to disarm in exchange for aid and security guarantees.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill emphasized upon his arrival in Beijing that all sides "have to take those ideas on paper and move them to the ground."

"I hope that (North Korea) understands that, as the rest of us do, that we really are reaching a fork in the road," Hill said. "We can either go forward on a diplomatic track or you have to go to a ... track that involves sanctions and I think ultimately will really be very harmful to the (North's) economy."

The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution punishing the North's Oct. 9 nuclear test with sanctions barring its weapons trade. But it is not clear how much effect those measures have had given that the North was already economically isolated, the fact that its main trading partners, China and South Korea, haven't employed the tough checks the resolution calls for.

South Korea's main envoy, Chun Yung-woo, said Sunday that "we cannot predict anything yet" regarding the outcome of the talks.

"The biggest variable is how serious an attitude North Korea brings and how much political will North Korea has in dismantling its nuclear program," he said before meeting the Russian delegation.

The North has insisted on the lifting of financial restrictions against a Macau-based bank where it held accounts, leading to its boycott of the nuclear talks that last met in November 2005. The U.S. blacklisted the bank just before the September 2005 agreement, saying it was complicit in Pyongyang's counterfeiting of U.S. currency and money laundering to sell weapons of mass destruction.

Hill said the U.S. was prepared to discuss that subject in separate working talks here with U.S. Treasury Department officials, but emphasized that issue was separate from the main focus on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

However, the main North Korean negotiator Kim Kye Gwan said Saturday when arriving in Beijing that he was looking for a first step from the Americans, calling the lifting of the U.S. financial restrictions a "precondition" to the negotiations moving forward.

Hill declined to respond publicly to Kim's demand, but emphasized that U.N. sanctions for the North's nuclear test would remain in effect until the North gives up its atomic programs.

"Most of the world has told them that we don't accept them as a nuclear state," the U.S. diplomat said. "If they want a future with us, if they want to work with us, if they want to be a member of the international community, they're going to have to get out of this nuclear business."

All delegates from the six countries involved - China, Japan, Russia, the U.S. and the two Koreas - were to meet later Sunday for dinner. No end date has been set for the negotiations, which officially start Monday, but Hill said he hoped to return to Washington by the end of the week.

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Associated Press reporter Bo-mi Lim contributed to this report.
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