U.S. not to give aid to N. Korea without nuke talks progress: Clinton

(ATTN: UPDATES with more details, background throughout)
By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, April 30 (Yonhap) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said
Thursday that the U.S. government will not provide economic aid to North Korea
unless Pyongyang stops making nuclear and missile threats and returns to the
six-party nuclear disarmament talks.

"We have absolutely no interest and no willingness on the part of this
administration to give them any economic aid at all," Clinton told a Senate
Appropriations Committee hearing. "They are digging themselves into a deeper and
deeper hole with the international community."
She was addressing North Korea's threat to boycott the six-party talks, restart
its nuclear facilities and enhance its nuclear arsenal in defiance of the U.N.
Security Council's condemnation of its recent missile test.
The U.N. also aims to impose embargoes on three North Korean firms involved in
the trade of parts for missiles and other weapons of mass destruction.
North Korea insists it orbited a communications satellite, although the U.S. and
its allies say it was a disguised ballistic missile test.
Describing North Korea's provocations as "absolutely unacceptable," Clinton said,
"That money is in there in the event, which at this point seems implausible if
not impossible, the North Koreans return to the six-party talks and begin to
disable their nuclear capacity again."
The Obama administration has asked for US$176.5 million in the budget for the
fiscal year starting in October for North Korea's denuclearization.
The U.S. is obligated to provide 200,000 tons of heavy fuel oil and help pay for
disabling North Korea's nuclear facilities in the second phase of the six-party
deal.
The third and final phase calls for dismantlement of all of North Korea's nuclear
programs and facilities in return for the North getting hefty economic and
political benefits from the five other parties to the talks, South Korea, the
U.S., China, Russia and Japan.
Some analysts say North Korea aims to derail the six-party talks with the goal of
reviving bilateral talks with the U.S., discontinued after President George W.
Bush's inauguration in 2001.
U.S. congressional reports have estimated the dismantlement of North Korea's
nuclear facilities will cost up to $575 million over the next several years.
The bill, HR 2642, the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008, enables the U.S.
government to finance the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear facilities through
2013, superseding the Glenn Amendment, which bans any financial aid to states
that have conducted a nuclear test.
The U.S. spent $25 million on North Korea in the fiscal year that ended in
September last year.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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