Mon Apr 14, 1:33 AM ET
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Posted on 04/14/2003 3:44:44 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Bush sees progress toward multilateral talks on North Korea nuclear crisis
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Mon Apr 14, 1:33 AM ET
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WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) said that he saw progress in moving toward multilateral talks to resolve the impasse over North Korea (news - web sites)'s nuclear weapons program after Pyongyang signaled some flexibility on the issue.
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"We are making progress on the Korean peninsula," Bush told reporters at the White House.
"We have made it clear that we think that the best way to deal with their proliferation is through a multinational forum. It looks like that might be coming to fruition, that's very good news," he said.
"We expect there to be a nuclear weapons free peninsula," he said, a goal he said was shared by China, Japan and South Korea (news - web sites).
Bush's comments followed North Korea's announcement Saturday that it would accept any form of dialogue with Washington over its suspected nuclear program if the latter dropped its hostile policy toward the communist state.
Until now, Pyongyang had insisted on one-on-one talks with Washington to resolve the dispute over its nuclear ambitions.
Washington has rejected Pyongyang's demand, insisting a bilateral negotiating track would amount to a reward for "bad behavior" by North Korea.
"If the US is ready to make a bold switchover in its Korea policy for a settlement of the nuclear issue, the DPRK (North Korea) will not stick to any particular dialogue format," a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman told the official Korean Central News Agency Saturday.
"The solution to the issue depends on what is the real intention of the US," the spokesman added.
The State Department reacted by saying Saturday: "We note the (North Korean) report with interest, we expect to follow up through appropriate diplomatic channels."
The North Korean spokesman said Pyongyang's longstanding call for one-on-one talks was intended to confirm whether the United States had the political willingness to drop its hostile policy towards North Korea.
Like Iraq (news - web sites), where US-led forces have ousted the regime of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), North Korea, along with Iran, has been branded by Bush as part of an "axis of of evil."
But Bush and other top US officials have denied they are considering using military power to force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions.
Asked what North Korea and its leaders might infer from what they are seeing on television in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told CBS television "I think the circumstances are quite different.
"But the United States is attempting to see if there isn't a way to deal with this problem from a diplomatic standpoint."
"It's a terrible risk to the world that if North Korea does, in fact, go through the reprocessing of nuclear materials and end up with sufficient materials to make six or eight more weapons in three or four or five months, that would be not a good thing," he added.
"If they started selling that material to countries around the world and we ended up with a large increase in the total number of nuclear powers in the world, that's not a happy place."
Experts say North Korean officials have been deeply affected by events in Iraq and are carefully weighing their options and evaluating the potential impact of the situation on the international community.
South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun meanwhile said in a speech Sunday that he was confident the North Korean nuclear crisis "will be solved peacefully through diplomatic means."
The first UN Security Council talks on the North Korean crisis ended in deadlock Wednesday, with Russia and China blocking attempts by other permanent members Britain, France and the United States to condemn North Korea's suspected weapons drive which could pave the way for UN sanctions.
Pyongyang has warned that it would view any imposition of UN sanctions as an outright "declaration of war."
North Korea reportedly admitted to Washington in October that it was running a secret uranium-enrichment programme, in violation of a 1994 nuclear deal between the two countries.
The United States soon afterwards stopped fuel aid to the North and Pyongyang later threatened to restart a program to produces weapons-grade plutonium, kicked out International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors and quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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