Seoul turns down NKorea's proposal to return to six-party talks

SEOUL, March 17 (Itar-Tass) - Seoul turned down a recent North Korean
proposal to return to the six-party talks without any preliminary
conditions, said on Thursday at a briefing for reporters South Korean
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Kim Sung-hwan.
He emphasised that the North should at first to prove by deeds its
commitment to assumed obligations on denuclearisation.
Following a recent meeting with head of the Russian delegation at the
six-party talks Alexei Borodavkin, the North Korean Foreign Ministry
announced its readiness for resumption of the nuclear dialogue of the six
countries and discussion of the programme for uranium enrichment,
continued by the North.
Seoul found as unacceptable such an initiative by Pyongyang, which
will mean in actual fact that the North does not intend to make steps,
confirming its commitment to abandon nuclear programmes, on which South
Korea insists. "This is at variance with the stand of the other five
countries, coming out for creating appropriate conditions to resume the
six-party talks. North Korea should show not in words, but in deeds (its
commitment to obligations on denuclearisation)", the South Korean minister
emphasised.
North Korea admitted the presence of the uranium enrichment programme
last November, which made the international community express its concern
over Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities, notes the Yonghap news agency.
Enriched uranium can be used for manufacturing nuclear weapons, which
increases a possibility, along with the plutonium programme operating in
the North, for producing nuclear weapons.
Although Pyongyang insists that uranium is enriched only for
generation of electricity and that the country has the right to peaceful
atom, almost nobody believes in such statements by the regime which has
been entertaining nuclear ambitions for decades and which twice carried
out nuclear tests, stresses the South Korean news agency.