NK not to abandon nukes without security guarantee: Carter

WASHINGTON (Yonhap) -- North Korea wants to have an unconditional dialogue with South Korea and the United States on denuclearization or any other subjects, but will not abandon its nuclear weapons without a security guarantee, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday.

"We are hearing consistently throughout our busy schedule here in Pyongyang that the North wants to improve relations with America and is prepared to talk without preconditions to both the U.S. and South Korea on any subject," Carter said in a message posted on the website of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders to promote global peace and humanity. "The sticking point, and it's a big one, is that they won't give up their nuclear program without some kind of security guarantee from the U.S."

Carter wrote the message dated on Wednesday, the second day of his trip to Pyongyang together with three other members of The Elders, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland and former Irish President Mary Robinson.

Carter and his entourage have met with North Korea's ceremonial head of state, Kim Yong-nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, and Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun since Tuesday, North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said.

It is not clear at the moment whether Carter met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and his heir apparent and youngest son, Jong-un, although he said in Beijing Monday that he wanted to meet with the Kims.

"We will be working hard in our few days in Pyongyang to learn as much as we can about the North Korean position," Carter said. "I hope we will be able to return to the U.S. and Europe with a positive and constructive message. We have been told that our visit here is seen as helpful in establishing a positive atmosphere and that the people in both North and South expect a lot from us."

Carter and his colleagues are to meet with Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan and other senior South Korean officials and give a press conference in Seoul Thursday at the end of a three-day trip to the reclusive communist state.

Seoul officials have said they did not know any plans by President Lee Myung-bak to meet with Carter.

Kim Sung-hwan said Monday he did not expect much from Carter's trip to North Korea, calling on North Korea to engage South Korea directly rather than through a third party.

South Korean chief nuclear envoy Wi Sung-lac met with his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei, in Seoul Tuesday to agree on the need for North Korea to have bilateral nuclear dialogue with South Korea, followed by Pyongyang holding another bilateral discussion with Washington before moving to a plenary session of the six-party talks.

Seoul and Washington also call on Pyongyang to address South Koreans' grievances over the North's torpedoing of a South Korean warship and the shelling of a border island that killed 50 people last year before any resumption of the six-party talks.

The talks have been stalled for more than two years over the North's nuclear and missile tests and other provocations.

North Korea refused to apologize for last year's provocations and walked out of a rare inter-Korean dialogue in February.

Pyongyang also revealed in November a uranium enrichment plant, another way of making nuclear weapons separate from its plutonium program, which Seoul and Washington wants to be dealt with at the U.N. Security Council before the reopening of the denuclearization-for-aid talks. Pyongyang and Beijing insist the uranium be discussed at the six-party talks.

Carter called for the establishment of a peace treaty on the Korean Peninsula to defuse chronic tensions there since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

"It is to my mind a tragedy that, more than 60 years after the Armistice that ended the Korean War, North and South Korea have not signed a peace treaty," he said. "My country, the United States, is South Korea's guarantor, which creates enormous anxiety among the North Korean people and drains their political energy and resources."

A six-party deal signed in 2005 calls for a permanent peace regime in the Korean Peninsula to replace the fragile armistice, along with massive economic aid and diplomatic recognition of North Korea by the U.S. and Japan in return for the North's nuclear dismantlement.

Carter's trip is the second of its kind since August, when he toured Pyongyang to bring back an American citizen caught for illegal entry.

He could not meet with Kim Jong-il at the time as the North Korean leader had traveled to China for a meeting with President Hu Jintao. Kim made the trip in an apparent attempt to seek Chinese support for the unprecedented third-generation power transition to his youngest son.

Carter is widely expected to bring back a Korean-American who has been held in North Korea since November for illegal religious activities, although he said in Beijing Monday that he will not raise the issue of the detained American while in Pyongyang.

The family of the detained American has pleaded for his release, citing ill health.