- AFP) -- North Korea said the United States must sign
a peace pact with Pyongyang and meet other demands in negotiations to resolve
a crisis over the Stalinist state's nuclear weapons.
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- However it rejected Washington's bottom line -- that
North Korea scrap its weapons programme before talks begin.
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- "This is very abnormal logic," the North said
in a statement. "Then how can the DPRK (North Korea) counter-attack
with empty hand?"
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- In the rambling 1,200 word statement, North Korea failed
to directly confirm an admission revealed by Washington last week that
it was running a nuclear weapons programme.
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- Instead it put the blame for the crisis on the United
States, which it said wanted to derail the regime's successful drive to
escape half-a-century of isolation and improve ties with South Korea and
Japan.
-
- The statement said that as well as agreeing to a non-aggression
pact, Washington must also recognize North Korean sovereignty and agree
not to interfere in the country's economic development, taken as a reference
to a lifting of US economic sanctions imposed on the North.
-
- "The DPRK considers that it is a reasonable and
realistic solution to the nuclear issue to conclude a non-aggression treaty
between the DPRK and the US," the statement added.
-
- The statement was released ahead of summit talks Saturday
in Mexico between US President George W. Bush, South Korean President Kim
Dae-Jung, and Japanese Prime Minister Junicho Koizumi on how to handle
the crisis.
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- The United States said it was reviewing the North Korean
offer and would have a response later.
-
- South Korea requested further clarification, saying the
statement dodged the key issue of whether Pyongyang was developing nuclear
weapons and still intended to do so.
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- Washington revealed last week that the North had admitted
it was running a clandestine nuclear weapons programme based on enriched-uranium
in violation of a 1994 arms control deal.
-
- Washington said the North also declared the 1994 deal,
the Agreed Framework, "nullified," during US envoy James Kelly's
October 3-5 visit to Pyongyang.
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- The North's stunning admission alarmed South Korea and
other Asian neighbours and prompted the United States to demand the "immeditate
and verifiable" scrapping of the programme.
-
- Kelly said that North Korean officials made the admission
after he confronted them with evidence of the programme.
-
- In its statement, Pyongyang denied that the US envoy
had produced any evidence and said Kelly's trip showed the Bush administration
wanted to "stifle the DPRK by force and backpeddle the positive development
of the situation in the Korean peninsula and the rest of northeast Asia."
-
- It said that the United States was responsible the crisis
because it had broken the 1994 Agreed Framework under Pyongyang had pledged
to freeze its atomic ambitions.
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- Washington violated every article of the accord and "totally
nullified" the agreement by threatening the North Korea with nuclear
weapons and listing the country as part of an "exis of evil"
along with Iraq and Iraq.
-
- "This was a clear declaration of war against the
DPRK," the statement said.
-
- "Nobody would be so naive as to sit idle under such
(a) situation," it added.
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- "That was why the DPRK made itself very clear to
the special envoy of the US president that the DPRK was entitled to possess
not only nuclear weapon but any type of weapon more powerful than that
so as to defend its sovereignty and right to existence from the ever-growing
nuclear threat by the US," it said.
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- The leaders from the United States, South Korea and Japan
are meeting on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economi Cooperation forum
in Los cabos mexico to determine how to resolve the nuclear crisis.
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- All three have pledged to seek a peaceful solution and
will discuss how best to do so.
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