- SEOUL (AFP) - US envoy James
Kelly said the United States wanted a peaceful solution to the North Korean
nuclear crisis, but warned Pyongyang to "immediately" drop its
nuclear weapons programme.
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- Kelly said the United States would continue to work with
South Korea, Japan and other allies to prompt an "immediate and visible
dismantling" of North Korea's nuclear programme.
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- "We hope ... to bring maximum international pressure
(on North Korea) to abandon its nuclear ambition," he said at a press
conference here.
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- Two weeks ago Kelly, the US assistant secretary of state
for East Asian and Pacific affairs, made the first high-level US contact
with the regime in nearly two years when he travelled to Pyongyang to confront
North Korea with evidence that it was running a nuclear programme.
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- He said the North had been engaged in an enriched uranium
nuclear programme for years and the United States had yet to determine
the next step if the Stalinist regime pushed ahead with it.
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- "There is no deadline to this. This is a difficult
and complex problem," he said. "We're just going to have to see
how it unfolds."
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- Kelly was speaking after meeting with top advisors to
President Kim Dae-Jung and South Korean Foreign Minister Choi Sung-Hong
following his arrival here from Beijing, where he held two rounds of talks
on the nuclear crisis with Chinese officials.
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- Kelly's talks are part of a US drive to step up international
pressure following the North's bombshell admission that it has been pursuing
a nuclear weapons program.
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- The United States revealed Wednesday the startling admission
made to Kelly on his visit to Pyongyang a fortnight ago.
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- Washington's top arms control official, John Bolton,
who was in Beijing with Kelly, is travelling to Moscow, London, Paris and
Brussels for further talks.
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- Concrete steps will be determined at a three-way summit
between the United States, South Korea and Japan at the Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) forum late this month in Mexico, South Korean officials
said.
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- Kelly indicated that the North sought to use the nuclear
crisis to win concessions from the United States first, before they would
discuss US demands to shut down their weapons programme.
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- But the US envoy said the current crisis was unlike a
previous nuclear scare in 1993-94, when suspicions that North Korea was
enriching plutonium for nuclear bombs put the Korean peninsula on a war
footing.
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- "This is not a replay of 1993 and 1994 and when
I went to North Korea I wanted them to undertand just how important we
believe this violation of past agreements is," he said.
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- He said channels of communication remained open with
the North "if they wish to give us information."
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- Speculation that Pyongyang wanted diplomatic recognition
from Washington, a US pledge not to use nuclear weapons against it and
other benefits was not far from the truth, he said.
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- "But they did suggest after this harsh and personally
to me suprising admission that there were measures that might be taken
that were generally along those lines," he said.
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- "But they indicated that when all of these good
things were done then maybe we might begin to talk about their covert uranium
enrichment programme. And that really in my view has got it all upside
down."
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- He said that in Beijing Chinese officials listened patiently
to him then issued a statement strongly opposing nuclear weapons on the
Korean peninsula.
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- Kelly heads for Tokyo for further talks on Sunday and
expressed support for Japan's continued drive to engage the Stalinist North
in normalization talks later this month as well as continued South Korean
dialogue with Pyongyang.
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- Kelly was speaking after a cabinet-level South Korean
delegation arrived in Pyongyang earlier Saturday for four days of talks
that were scheduled before the nuclear crisis erupted.
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- The South's Unification Minister Jeong Se-Hyun, leading
the five-member mission, said he would press the nuclear issue.
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- "We will make efforts to resolve the nuclear issue
on the one hand and push forward with the agreed-upon agenda for reconciliation
and exchange on the other," said Jeong.
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- Copyright © 2001 AFP
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