North Korea says it is time US to decide on nuclear talks

As expected, after having no significant outcome from Ri Gun's visit to the US (and probably sobering meetings for the North Koreans), North Korea has made its next move - openly demand the US agree to a bilateral negotiation, again, and warn that the US will be held responsible for any follow-on action North Korea takes since it is the US who is "refusing" to play ball. Assuming that the US will continue on its current path, it remains to see what compensation the North will demand for agreeing to resume the multilateral talks. The other option? Set an artificial deadline with a threat that it will create another incident to cause "the appearance" of tension.

Here's what the North Korea Foreign Ministry Spokesman said today as carried by the [North] Korean Central News Agency:

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DPRK Foreign Ministry Spokesman Urges U.S. to Sit At Negotiating Table, to Begin With
Korean Central News Agency
11/02/2009

Pyongyang – A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry gave the following answer to a question put by KCNA today [02 November] as regards the ongoing visit to the United States by its delegation: The delegation led by the director general of the U.S. Affairs Department of the Foreign Ministry is staying in the U.S. to attend the 20th Session of the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue sponsored by the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and the exchange of views between the DPRK and the U.S. organized by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.

While staying there the delegation responded to the request made by the ambassador of the U.S. Department of State for contact.

This contact was not a preliminary one for the DPRK-U.S. talks and, accordingly, no discussion has been made there on any substantial issue concerning the bilateral dialogue.

It is the stand of the DPRK already known to the world that it will go out for multilateral talks depending on the outcome of the DPRK-U.S. talks to be kicked off before anything else and the six-party talks are included in the multilateral talks.

This stand of the DPRK proceeded from the principled and reasonable assertion that if the Korean Peninsula is to be denuclearized the hostile relations between the DPRK and the U.S. should be settled to give priority to the process of totally removing the root source that spawned the DPRK's access to nukes.

The past six year-long course of the six-party talks proved that no matter how frequently the six parties meet, it is nothing but an armchair argument unless the hostile relations between the DPRK and the U.S. are settled and confidence is built between them. The U.S. pulled up only the DPRK over its satellite launch for peaceful purposes and even brought up the issue for discussion at the UN Security Council, putting into effect sanctions against the latter. This resulted in violating the principles of respecting sovereignty and sovereign equality, the basic spirit of the September 19 joint statement, and reducing it to a dead document.

The political sovereignty of the DPRK was not only violated but it suffered a huge economic loss. The construction of atomic power stations to be operated by graphite-moderated reactors which had been under way with much effort since the 1980s was suspended but the provision of two light water reactors which had been promised as a compensation for them ended in smoke. The DPRK received little economic reward for disabling its nuclear facilities in Nyongbyon.

In the final analysis, only the DPRK plan to develop its own nuclear power industry with a capacity of two million Kw was scuttled.

It is the conclusion drawn by the DPRK that the DPRK and the U.S., the parties concerned, should sit at a negotiating table, to begin with, to seek a reasonable solution.

If the hostile relations between the DPRK and the U.S. are settled and confidence is built between them, there will be meaningful progress in realizing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

As the DPRK was magnanimous enough to clarify the stand that it is possible to hold multilateral talks including the six-party talks depending on the talks with the U.S., now is the U.S. turn. If the U.S. is not ready to sit at a negotiating table with the DPRK, it will go its own way.

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Also, here are some of the other media reporting on the recent North Korean statement: North Korea says it is time US to decide on nuclear talks (Agence France-Presse); N. Korea Demands Direct Talks With The U.S. (Yonhap News Agency)