Free Chinese Lesson - Nuclear test means now we can talk - N.Korea

WORLD / North Korea

Nuclear test means now we can talk - N.Korea

(AP)
Updated: 2006-11-28 11:24

BEIJING - North Korea is prepared to return to six-country talks on its
nuclear weapons programme at any time now that it has "gained a defensive
position" with a nuclear test, a senior envoy of North Korea said on
Tuesday.

North Korean envoy Kim Kye-gwan arrives at Beijing airport November 28,
2006. North Korea is ready to return to talks on ending its nuclear
weapons programme but still had difficult issues to iron out with the
United States, Kim said on Tuesday. [Reuters]

But Kim Kye-gwan told reporters on arrival for talks in Beijing that
North Korea still had differences to narrow with the United States, which
has squeezed Pyongyang's external sources of financing for more than a
year.

North Korea agreed to return to the six-party talks, which it had
boycotted for a year, after its October 9 underground nuclear test
triggered international condemnation and UN-backed sanctions.

"Because after the nuclear test, we have gained a defensive position
against those who are trying to suppress us. Now we are in a very
confident position and so we are ready to come back to the talks any
time," Kim told reporters.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Kim as saying: "We have many
issues in dispute (with the United States). We have to narrow them to
some extent."
The six-party talks bring together the two Koreas, the United States,
China, Japan and Russia. Envoys from all countries except Russia are in
Beijing for preparatory discussions.

DANCE PARTNERS

US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill met Kim and his Chinese
counterpart on Tuesday in bilateral and trilateral meetings, a Chinese
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.

"I am here because of the kind invitation of the US Assistant Secretary
of State Mr. Hill," Kim told reporters before the meetings. "He is going
to introduce me to his dancing rhythm."

Hill told reporters on arrival on Monday that he anticipated the
six-party talks "will get going at some point very soon".

North Korea agreed to return to the talks after Washington said it was
willing to address its concerns about financial restrictions, tightened
in September 2005 when US regulators named a Macau bank as a conduit for
illicit North Korean cash from currency counterfeiting and drug
trafficking.

US and South Korean officials have said the new round of talks must make
substantive progress on implementing an agreement in principle reached
last year or risk losing credibility.

Under that agreement, North Korea said it was committed "to abandoning
all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes".

In return, the other nations held out economic, political and security
incentives.

US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said the United States wanted
North Korea to return to the six-party talks with the intention of
standing by its word.

Burns said Hill could find out in "a day or two" whether Pyongyang was
ready to begin moving forward on its commitment to abandon all nuclear
weapons and existing nuclear programmes.

"If we go back to the six-party talks it won't be just to have endless
negotiations ... it will be to see that agreement implemented," Burns
told the Asia Society in New York on Monday.

"We're ready -- the question is are the North Koreans ready?"

North Korea's KCNA news agency meanwhile resumed its bellicose rhetoric
directed, as usual, against the United States.

"The reality goes to prove that force is the only means of countering the
United States which behaves as it pleases, showing off its strength, just
as a mad dog should be dealt with a stick," the agency quoted the
state-run Minju Joson newspaper as saying.

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