BEIJING _ North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator reiterated Tuesday his country's denial of allegations that the North is helping Syria with a secret atomic weapons program, warning six-nation talks aimed at denuclearizing the North could grind to a halt if no substantial agreement is reached this week, Yonhap News reported.
Dismissing recent media reports that the North may have provided nuclear technology to Syria, Pyongyang said last week "dishonest forces" were spreading such suspicions to overturn progress in ties between Washington and Pyongyang, the news agency said.
"Lunatics have created these rumors about a nuclear deal between us and Syria," Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan was quoted to tell reporters upon arriving at Beijing's international airport Tuesday morning. Kim is to attend a new round of six-nation talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear program.
Andrew Semmel, acting U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear nonproliferation, told a conference earlier this month that Syria has "secret suppliers" of nuclear equipment and that there were North Koreans in the country, raising alarm over a possible nuclear link between the two states.
Underling the significance of the negotiations that involve the two Koreas, the U.S., Russia, Japan and host China, Kim warned North Korea's denuclearization could stop if the six-party talks fail to produce an agreement during the four-day round that begins Thursday.
"Denuclearization will continue if we reach a agreement on the steps we have achieved so far," Yonhap quoted Kim as saying. "And this is a very important meeting where things will return to the starting point if no agreement is produced."
North Korea in July shut down its key nuclear facility under a landmark deal reached earlier this year. A multinational team of experts recently completed surveying the North's nuclear facilities that are to be disabled, a main topic in this week's talks in Beijing.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday Pyongyang has yet to come clean on all of its nuclear programs.