N. Korea Urges US to Accept Demand for 2-Way Talks
By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter
North Korea called on the United States to make a decision on whether it wants to have bilateral talks to discuss the North's nuclear issue.
Pyongyang warned that it will go its own way if Washington remains unresponsive to its long-standing demand.
The secretive state has been seeking to have a two-way meeting with the U.S. in an apparent attempt to overcome the economic hardship and international sanctions.
"Now, it's time for the United States to make a decision," the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KNCA) said, citing an unidentified spokesman for the North's foreign ministry. "If the United States is not ready to sit vis-a-vis with us, we will go our own way."
North Korea blamed the United States, saying that it saw great economic losses due to its denuclearization efforts.
"Disabling the (plutonium-producing) Yongbyon facility wasn't beneficial to us," it said. "After all, our plan to develop the industries through 2-million-kilowatt nuclear power ended in failure."
North Korea and the United States should sit down face-to-face and find a reasonable solution, it added.
"Once we end the hostile relationship and build trust, we can see meaningful progress in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula," the agency said.
The South's Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young reiterated that the government supports a possible bilateral dialogue if it is helpful to the nuclear dismantlement and takes place within the context of the six-party talks.
In a related development, Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said that now is a great chance for North Korea.
"We should talk about every issue facing us," he said in his speech during the opening ceremony of an exhibition in Seoul. "I expect North Korea to make a decision (on denuclearization)."
The North Korean move came after Ri Gun, North Korea's chief diplomat on U.S. affairs, had a closed-door meeting with American officials in the United States last week.
Details of the discussion and what Ri offered to his U.S. counterparts remains hidden.
Pyongyang has been showing conciliatory gestures toward South Korea and the United States by lifting a travel ban in August imposed on South Koreans.
Earlier, the reclusive country freed two U.S. journalists detained for illegal entry after former U.S. President Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang.
Additionally, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was also quoted as saying by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that his regime is "willing to solve the nuclear issue through bilateral talks with the United States and multilateral talks."
The latter meeting refers to the six-party denuclearization forum involving the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia.
However, Washington has said that it would not have bilateral talks with Pyongyang unless the North returned to the six-nation talks.
Pyongyang declared that it would boycott the forum forever last April.