NK's Nuke Program Matter of Int'l Concern
2003-04-23
The following is an excerpt of a press briefing held Monday in Washington, D.C., by Richard Boucher, spokesman for the U.S. State Department, concerning multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear development program scheduled for April 23-25 in Beijing.
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Boucher: Multilateral talks involving the United States, China and North Korea will take place April 23-25 in Beijing. We intend to conduct serious talks on the situation created by North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons, and, indeed our interagency delegation for those talks has already departed Washington and is on its way to Beijing.
The interagency U.S. delegation will be headed by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs James Kelly. The North Korean delegation will be headed by Deputy Director General Li Gun from the American Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Chinese delegation will be headed by Fu Ying, director-general for Asian affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons is a matter of great concern to the entire international community and especially to countries in the region, all of whom are interested in participating directly in the talks. We believe that inclusion of others in multilateral talks _ South Korea and Japan above all _ would be essential for reaching agreement on substantive issues.
We appreciate China's efforts to achieve the international community's shared goal of a peaceful and stable Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons. The United States will remain in close consultation with Japan, Korea, and work with China and with other friends and allies on our diplomatic efforts to resolve the international community's concerns over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.
Q: Could you clarify the confusion that existed as of Friday as to what the North Koreans really said?
Boucher: Well, far be it from me to try to clarify the confusion created by differing North Korean statements in different languages, but I would point out that we did, I think, base our assessment on the Korean text, and the Japanese text was in conformity. And I understand that North Koreans have now put out another English text as of today that corresponds more accurately to the Korean text that we saw last Friday.
Q: Do you have assurances from North Korea that down the line the Japanese and the South Koreans will be welcome?
Boucher: I think as we have mentioned, it's very much in our interests and we are very much interested in seeing the Japanese and the Koreans, South Koreans, participate in these talks.
I think it's important to North Korea as well because many of the opportunities that they are looking for in the world, they're missing out on from Japan and South Korea, as well as from others. So they have an interest in talking to these people as well, but the broader interests of the international community, I think, are being represented in these talks. We'll keep pushing for inclusion, but at this point I'm not aware of any assurances from the North Korean side. These are initial discussions. We'll see how things evolve.
Q: What do you say to reports that Secretary Powell sort of arranged this on his own, and especially that it appears it was without the Pentagon backing the idea of having just the three-way talks?
Boucher: I would say that this is the approach President Bush has outlined. This is the approach of multilateral negotiations the president has wanted. The secretary has been in close touch with other members of the cabinet, and particularly with the president and members of the NSC, in carrying out the president's desires on this.
Q: And was there an attempt by the Pentagon to say this wasn't the right way to go, this report about the memo...
Boucher: You'd have to ask the Pentagon about their own memos. It may or may not be accurately reported in newspapers. All I know is we've been working closely with the pursuing the president's policy, and you have the president's statements of yesterday. The president himself was out yesterday making clear that he looked for these discussions to produce the kind of denuclearized peninsula that we want, that the Chinese want, and that others want as well.
Q: You said, if I noted it correctly, that you intended to conduct serious talks on the situation created by North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons. In the TRI-COG statement, you had said that you were willing to talk, if I understood it correctly, solely about North Korea coming into compliance and abandoning its nuclear weapons. Did you mean by that formulation the situation created to expand the field of what you are willing to talk about?
Boucher: I don't think that's exactly the way we put it in the trilateral statement, although I would have to get it out. I haven't reread it recently. I would say certainly the item on the agenda for the United States is to achieve a verifiable and irreversible end to North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, and that that is what we are going to be putting forward. That is what we are going to be looking for. And as we have made clear, we are not prepared to offer any inducements to North Korea to try to achieve that.
Q: How hard did the U.S. side work to get South Korea and Japan included at this _ at these initial meetings? Was that a priority that you had to step back from, then?
Boucher: We have always wanted this. We have always, first and foremost, wanted a multilateral forum. When the secretary talked with the Japanese during his trip, with the Chinese during his trip at the end of February, and with the South Koreans, the emphasis was on the need for a multilateral forum, and during that trip he asked the Chinese if they would be prepared to help put together such a forum and even host the talks in Beijing.
Source : www.korea.net
