INTERVIEW-Rice hints at flexibility on North Korea
Source: Reuters
(Adds quotes, details throughout) By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hinted at flexibility in next week's six-country talks with North Korea, saying the negotiations are part of a process and cannot be judged by one session. "This is going to be a process and so I don't think we ought to try and judge the first step on its own merits but rather look at it as a part of a set of steps that we're going to take toward denuclearization," she told Reuters in an interview. She insisted that U.N. sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for an Oct. 9 nuclear weapons test will continue to be enforced even if the six-country talks in Beijing show progress. But Rice indicated flexibility on resolving a dispute over what the United States says is Pyongyang's counterfeiting of U.S. dollars and money laundering, which led to North Korean accounts at the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia being frozen. "We're not going to allow them to continue to violate our laws, but obviously we'll look at the totality of all of this and see where we are after the next couple of rounds" of talks, Rice said. Communist North Korea cited the U.S.-led financial crackdown as a reason for boycotting nuclear negotiations for more than a year. Washington's recent decision to set up a separate U.S.-North Korea working group to address the financial assets issue helped spur Pyongyang's return to the six-party talks, which also include China, Russia, South Korea and Japan. DEAL SPECULATED The planned resumption on Monday of six-country talks in Beijing on Pyongyang's nuclear programs has fanned speculation about a U.S.-North Korea trade-off. Some critics worry U.S. President George W. Bush is still not prepared to show the flexibility needed to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear arsenal while advocates of a hard line against the North fear that Bush, desperate for a foreign policy success, may give up too much. There is no expectation of a major breakthrough in which Pyongyang would embrace Washington's demand to completely and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear weapons programs, U.S. officials and experts have said. But North Korea, having already reaped 10 or more bombs' worth of plutonium from its Yongbyon nuclear complex, might halt work there in return for U.S. concessions, such as the start of discussions on security assurances for North Korea or a peace treaty to replace the 1950-53 Korean war armistice, former U.S. officials have told Reuters. Rice repeated the U.S. demand that next week's talks must produce "concrete steps that the North Koreans are serious about denuclearization." But while Pyongyang's commitment to give up its nuclear programs must ultimately be irreversible, "I don't think we have to judge each set of steps by that criteria," she said when asked if the administration could accept a pause at Yongbyon as a partial measure. Some analysts have suggested that if the Beijing talks show progress, the U.N. Security Council will lose enthusiasm for enforcing sanctions it imposed two months ago after Pyongyang tested its first nuclear weapon. Rice insisted such progress in negotiations "doesn't undo the fact that North Korea tested a nuclear weapon". "I haven't seen any evidence that people are going to argue that we should start relaxing sanctions just because we've made one step forward in the six-party talks if indeed we even make one step forward," she said. Rice also said she had no indication Pyongyang might be planning another nuclear weapons test during the talks, as South Korea's defense minister said earlier on Friday. (Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Sue Pleming)
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
