North Korea says willing to resolve crisis

BEIJING (Reuters) – North Korea is willing to resolve a
crisis over its nuclear arms program at next week’s six-party
talks in Beijing, but said normalizing relations with
Washington was key to a deal, Chinese media said on Thursday.

“Not a single nuclear weapon will be needed for us if the
U.S. nuclear threat is removed and its hostile policy of
‘bringing down the DPRK’s system’ is withdrawn,” China’s
official Xinhua news agency quoted an unnamed North Korean
Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (DPRK).

A fourth round of talks involving the two Koreas, the
United States, China, Japan and Russia will open in Beijing
next week.

Pyongyang cited what it calls Washington’s hostile policy
toward it as the reason for refusing to participate in
six-party talks for more than one year and said it agreed to
come back after the United States said it would recognize North
Korea as a sovereign state.

The communist state repeated calls for its removal from the
U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism, and the lifting of
all sanctions against it, Xinhua added.

The basic premise of the talks is for North Korea to
dismantle all its nuclear weapons programs in a verifiable
manner in exchange for much-needed aid for its moribund economy
and security guarantees.