(LEAD) N. Korea demands sanctions be lifted before resumption of six-way talks

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SEOUL, Jan. 18 (Yonhap) -- North Korea said Monday it will not return to
international talks on its nuclear arms programs unless a "hat of sanctions" on
it is removed.

The statement by an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesperson also said Pyongyang has
"no ground whatsoever to delay" its return to the six-nation talks, but argued
they would fail without separate negotiations on ways to close the 1950-53 Korean
War that was suspended following a truce.
"If the six-party talks are to take place again, it is necessary to seek whatever
way of removing the factor of torpedoing them," said the statement, carried by
the official Korean Central News Agency.
If North Korea "goes out for the six-party talks, remaining subjected to the
sanctions, such talks will not prove to be equal talks as clarified," the
statement added.
It comes nearly a week after the U.S. brushed aside the North's Jan. 11 proposal
for negotiations aimed at eliminating the truce that Pyongyang says is the source
of U.S. hostilities against it.
"It is the purport of the DPRK's proposal for concluding a peace treaty to put an
end to such vicious cycle of distrust and build confidence to push forward
denuclearization," it said.
DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's
diplomatic title.
The communist state came under a new round of U.N. sanctions after it conducted a
rocket launch that was seen as a test of ballistic missile technology and went
ahead with its second nuclear test last year.
In protest against U.N. condemnation of the rocket launch in April, the North
declared as "dead" the six-nation talks that had already been stalled since
December 2008. The talks group the divided Koreas, the U.S., Japan, Russia and
China.
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