White House urges N. Korea to return to 6-party talks

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 (Yonhap) -- The Bush administration Friday urged North Korea
to return to multilateral talks on ending its nuclear weapons ambitions with less
than three weeks remaining in Bush's term.
"We want to see North Korea get back on the right track," Gordon Johndroe,
spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a daily press briefing. "We
think the six-party process has worked well."
Johndroe's remarks follow a commitment made by North Korea a day earlier that it
will denuclearize itself.
"The independent foreign policy of our Republic to denuclearize the Korean
Peninsula and defend the peace and security of Northeast Asia and the rest of the
world is demonstrating its validity more fully as the days go by," North Korea
said in a New Year's message Thursday.
The message skipped the North's usual accusations of the U.S. over its hostile
North Korea policy and deployment of U.S. troops in South Korea, fueling
speculation that Pyongyang is awaiting the Barack Obama administration for
continuation of the six-party talks.
The latest round of the talks ended without an agreement on verification of North
Korea's nuclear facilities, due mainly to North Korea's refusal to allow the
collection of samples from its main nuclear reactor.
North Korea has said it will agree to the sampling later, possibly in the third
and last phase of a multilateral deal signed by the six parties that include the
two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia. That phase is the dismantlement of
its nuclear programs and facilities.
The five other parties insist that the sampling should be part of the disablement
of the North's nuclear facilities, the second phase of the deal, under which
Pyongyang is supposed to get 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil.
North Korea did agree to visits by international inspectors to its declared
nuclear sites, as well as to interviews with its scientists and viewing of
related documents.
"The whole six-party process is based on action for action, and if the North
Koreans would take steps to allow a good verification protocol to take place,
then the United States, China, Russia and Japan and South Korea would be prepared
to fulfill their obligations, their actions in the agreement," Johndroe said.
On her last trip to China as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice will fly to
Beijing soon to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the restoration of bilateral
ties.
While in Beijing, she will also discuss ways to persuade North Korea to agree to
a verification regime, officials said.
State Department officials said that they did not know of any plan to invite
North Korean officials to the United States around the time of Obama's
inauguration Jan. 20.
There are rumors that North Korea's chief nuclear envoy, Kim Kye-gwan, will fly
to New York to meet with officials of the Obama administration on and around Jan.
20 on the margins of an academic seminar, just as Ri Gun, director general of the
North American affairs bureau of North Korea's foreign ministry, visited New York
on the day of Obama's election in early November.
The Obama transition team, however, has no plans to invite foreign delegations to
the inaugural ceremony, where ambassadors will represent their governments, the
officials said.
Reports said Obama will send a high-level envoy to Pyongyang soon after his
inauguration for discussions on the stalled nuclear talks.
Obama has said he will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il without any
preconditions, denouncing Bush for having allowed North Korea to produce eight
nuclear warheads by refusing to engage the North for the first six years of his
tenure.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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