U.S. urges N. Korea to try to improve inter-Korean ties

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, April 21 (Yonhap) -- The United States Tuesday urged North Korea to
take steps to improve inter-Korean ties and rescind its decision to expel
international nuclear inspectors.

The remarks by State Department spokesman Robert Wood come after North Korea
announced at a rare inter-Korean meeting earlier in the day that it will
reconsider preferential treatment to South Korean firms at the joint industrial
park in the North's border town of Kaesong.
The announcement was seen by some as a precursor to a virtual shutdown of the
industrial complex, which has been a symbol of economic cooperation between the
two Cold War rivals, in anger over conservative South Korean President Lee
Myung-bak's pledge to join the U.S-led campaign to intercept North Korean vessels
suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction.
"We've said for quite a long time that we'd like to see dialogue between North
Korea and the Republic of Korea," Wood said. "And we hope that future discussions
between both will be fruitful, and we urge the North to take a very positive and
good-faith approach to a dialogue with the South."
The North's hostile announcement, delivered to a South Korean delegation at the
Kaesong complex in the first bilateral contact since the launch of the Lee
administration early last year, comes on the heels of the North's expulsion of
international monitors from its nuclear complex to protest the U.N. Security
Council's condemnation of its rocket launch earlier this month.
North Korea insists it sent a communications satellite into space, although the
U.S. and its allies see the launch as a cover for a ballistic missile test.
North Korea also threatened to shun the six-party nuclear disarmament talks,
restart its nuclear facilities being disabled under a six-party deal and
strengthen its nuclear deterrent.
Wood urged the North to reverse its decision to expel international nuclear
inspectors.
"We're still working on trying to get that decision reversed," he said. "But our
ultimate goal here ... is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. And we
are going to work to try to get the North back to the six-party framework."
The six-party talks, deadlocked since December over North Korea's refusal to
agree to a verification protocol for its nuclear facilities, are doomed to fade
away as Pyongyang apparently aims to shift to bilateral negotiations with the new
Obama administration, according to some analysts.
Obama has said he will seek bilateral engagement for a breakthrough in the talks,
which have been on and off since their inception in 2003.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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