North Korea says willing to resolve crisis
Posted on: Thursday, 21 July 2005, 09:32 CDT
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be needed for us if the U.S. nuclear threat is removed and its hostile policy of 'bringing down the DPRK's system' is withdrawn," China's official Xinhua news agency quoted an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.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.
Source: REUTERS
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