U.S. calls on N. Korea to return to 6-way talks to discuss sanctions: State Dept.

By Hwang Doo-hyong

WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 (Yonhap) -- The United States Monday reiterated that it will not discuss lifting sanctions or signing a peace treaty unless North Korea returns to the six-party talks on ending its nuclear ambitions.

"Our position remains that North Korea should return to the six-party process
without preconditions," said Philip Crowley, assistant secretary of state for
public affairs. "We have said, if North Korea comes back to the six-party process
and if it begins to demonstrate, and take affirmative steps towards
denuclearization, that we would be prepared to have a wide-ranging bilateral or
multilateral dialogue in other issues."
Crowley was responding to the North Korean demand that sanctions be lifted and a
peace treaty signed to replace an armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War
before it comes back to the six-party talks to discuss the denuclearization in
the Korean Peninsula.
"And those could proceed, you know, within the six-party process as well,"
Crowley said. "So that remains available to North Korea. But the first step is to
commit to come back to the six-party process."
Pyongyang has boycotted the six-party talks, which also involve South Korea,
China, Japan and Russia, citing U.N. resolutions adopted after the North's
nuclear and missile tests early last year. The resolutions instituted financial
sanctions, an overall arms embargo and the interdiction of suspicious cargo on
the high seas.
U.S. officials have hinted at another face-to-face meeting to facilitate the
reopening of the negotiations since Stephen Bosworth, U.S. special representative
for North Korea policy, failed to woo the North back to the table. Bosworth's
trip to Pyongyang last month marked the Obama administration's first high-level
official contact with the North.
Speaking to a forum at the Center for American Progress, National Security
Adviser James Jones, meanwhile, described U.N. sanctions against North Korea as a
major first-year achievement for the president toward global nuclear
nonproliferation.
"We have secured new, stronger sanctions against North Korea," he said. "And in
the context of the six-party talks, we sent Ambassador Bosworth to Pyongyang last
month for direct talks, which has not happened in a long time."
Jones said the nuclear summit slated to be held here in April will address ways
to prevent nuclear proliferation and achieve the nuclear-free world Obama
proposed in Prague, the Czech Republic, in April.
"As the first U.S. president to chair a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, the
president has won a unanimous resolution on steps to stop proliferation," Jones
said. "Hosting a nuclear-security summit this April in Washington to rally other
nations to help secure the world's loose nuclear materials within four years is
one of our aspirational goals."
Ongoing talks with Russia for curtailment of the world's two largest nuclear
arsenals will also bolster the international nonproliferation regime, he said.
"We strengthened the global nonproliferation regime," he said. "The president has
laid out his agenda in Prague, working towards a world without nuclear weapons.
With Russia, we're making progress on the follow-on START agreement. And we're
moving towards good results in the not-too-distant future."
In a report issued last month, the State Department listed strengthened
international cooperation to impose sanctions on North Korea as one of the key
foreign policy achievements of the Obama administration, which took office last
January.
Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence, recently expressed satisfaction
with the international cooperation to implement the sanctions on North Korea,
saying, "Teamwork among different agencies in the United States and partners
abroad just last week led to the interdiction of a Middle East-bound cargo of
North Korean weapons."
Blair was referring to a cargo plane impounded in Bangkok last month while
carrying 35 tons of North Korean weapons to an unknown destination.
Arms sales are one of the major sources of revenue for North Korea, suspected of
being behind nuclear and missile proliferation in Syria, Iran, Pakistan and
several other countries.
The United Arab Emirates in July seized a Bahamian-flagged ship carrying North
Korean weapons. India seized a North Korean ship off its coast in August only to
find no weapons aboard. In June, a North Korean cargo ship, possibly on its way
to Myanmar, returned home after being closely tracked by U.S. Navy vessels.
hdh@yna.co.kr