Final Day of North Korea Talks Lies Ahead
VOA News
28 Aug 2003, 18:49 UTC
Multi-nation talks on the standoff over North Korea's nuclear program are about to enter their third and final day - with little hope for progress toward resolving the dispute.
Delegates from China, the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia are to issue a joint statement after the talks in Beijing end Friday. Officials say they will commit to meeting again within the next two months, probably in the Chinese capital.
South Korean media say North Korea has proposed a four-step agreement for resolving the nuclear stand-off. The JoongAng newspaper says the North Korean plan includes a call for a non-aggression pact and full diplomatic ties with the United States.
Russian, Chinese and South Korean delegates said North Korea emphasized that its ultimate goal is a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. But wire service reports in Washington quote an unnamed Bush administration official as saying North Korea threatened at the Beijing talks to formally declare itself a nuclear power and conduct a nuclear test.
The United States has insisted that Pyongyang offer complete, verifiable and irreversible elimination of its nuclear weapons program. There was no official U.S. reaction from Washington to the reported North Korean threat.
Japan made no progress in getting North Korea to release the children of Japanese citizens kidnapped by the North years ago and sent home last year. Japanese officials say North Korea's delegation accused Tokyo of breaking its promise to send the former abductees back to North Korea after what was supposed to be a temporary homecoming last October.
Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
