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N.Korea offered not to test nuclear arms - Seoul

Posted on: Monday, 14 November 2005, 03:53 CST

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea offered during talks last week to put off testing atomic weapons as a first step in a phased dismantling of its nuclear programs, South Korea's unification minister said on Monday.

The six parties involved in the negotiations -- the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China -- broke for recess on Friday after three days of talks in Beijing aimed at scrapping Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs in return for aid and better relations.

The United States has rejected anything short of an immediate and irreversible dismantling of North Korea's nuclear programs before it will offer compensation to the reclusive state.

South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told a televised panel discussion that the North presented its own road map of five steps toward dismantling its nuclear programs.

"It is meaningful that North Korea presented a road map, which it calls an action table, of five items on nuclear dismantling," Chung said during the panel discussion.

The North also offered to stop the production and transfer of nuclear material, to freeze its nuclear facility and to eventually dismantle its nuclear programs and return to international non-proliferation agreements, Chung said.

North Korea declared for the first time in February that it had nuclear weapons. There has never been clear evidence that the North has tested weapons and Western experts question whether the weapons have actually been deployed.

The so-called six-party talks have frequently been dogged by wide divisions and friction between Washington and Pyongyang.

In what appeared to be a breakthrough deal in September, North Korea said it would disarm in exchange for aid and security guarantees. It is also demanding a light-water reactor for civilian use.

But the United States said on Friday that any full agreement depended on North Korea shutting down its nuclear activities and accounting for its nuclear stockpiles, including uranium enrichment activities that Pyongyang has never formally acknowledged.

At the latest round of discussions that ended on Friday, North Korea demanded talks on ending action by Washington to freeze the communist state's overseas financial assets, saying the measures were hostile.

Visiting Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who has visited Pyongyang twice and met senior officials there, said the North must immediately abandon its nuclear ambitions and strike a deal with the five countries that will stick.

"They have spectacularly failed over a long period of time," he said of the North's negotiating strategy at a forum in Seoul when asked whether Pyongyang was using its nuclear weapons to gain political leverage.

He said Australia was prepared to provide "significant development aid, energy assistance and nuclear safeguards expertise" once the North verifiably abandoned its nuclear programs.

Source: REUTERS

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