North Korea says willing to resolve nuclear 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.

The comments were a positive signal ahead of the
negotiations set to begin on Tuesday that the United States has
said should make progress, rather than being “talks for talks’
sake” after three previous rounds yielded no agreement.

“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‘bringing down the DPRK’s system’ is withdrawn,” the official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).

North Korea has called for normalizing ties with the United
States before, but has not recently linked it as a condition
that could lead to a negotiated settlement at the six-party
talks.

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

Pyongyang cited what it calls Washington’s hostile policy
toward it as the reason for refusing to participate in the
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 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.

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

“The spokesman stressed that it’s the DPRK’s persistent
attitude to realize the denuclearisation of the Korean
Peninsula through dialogue and consultation,” the report said.

North Korea said explicitly for the first time in February
that it had nuclear weapons, ratcheting up the crisis that
began in 2002 over what Washington said was its enrichment of
uranium that could be used to make weapons.