LEAD) State Dept. cites progress in U.N. discussions for N. Korea sanctions

((ATTN: ADDS White House spokesman's remarks in paras 9-11)
By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, June 2 (Yonhap) -- The United States Tuesday said that progress has
been made in discussions at the U.N. Security Council for adoption of a
resolution to sanction North Korea for its second nuclear test in three years.

State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood, however, said a resolution will
take more time.
"I think we've seen some progress with regard to the resolution, but there's a
lot of work to do," Wood told a daily news briefing.
The spokesman said he expects another meeting of the five permanent council
members, plus South Korea and Japan, to be held Wednesday or so to discuss "a
very strong, unified resolution that responds to what the North has been doing."
A meeting of the so-called P-5 plus two was held Monday without reaching an
agreement on how to sanction North Korea. China and Russia remain reluctant to
impose general arms and financial embargoes that will eventually shut down North
Korea's main source of hard currency income and access to foreign financial
institutions.
Wood cautioned against suspicions that the council discussions are in trouble.
"Just because it's taking more time, you shouldn't read it in any way as giving
the North more leverage or us losing leverage," he said. "It's not really a
question of leverage, it's a question of making sure that we get the strongest
possible response to the North's activities."
He said he is confident that "there's a unity of purpose here to hold the North
accountable for the bellicose actions and threats that it has made over the last
several weeks, months. And we're going to continue to work that issue up in New
York."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs repeated Wood's theme.
"What's tremendously important is that the administration and, I think, all our
allies involved in the talks believe that it's important for North Korea to take
the necessary steps to live up to the responsibilities and the agreements that it
entered into; that coming back to the table, to have productive talks, are
important, because the actions that they're undertaking, as we've said countless
times, in the past many weeks, are simply steps that further isolate them from
the world," Gibbs told a daily news briefing.
He was talking about North Korea's announcement that it will boycott the
six-party talks on ending its nuclear weapons unless the U.N. Security Council
apologizes for its condemnation of North Korea's April 5 rocket launch, which
Pyongyang insists was to orbit a satellite.
Pyongyang also fired several short-range missiles, threatened to nullify the
armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War and avoid any dialogue with the U.S.
due to what it calls hostile policy, heightening tensions on the Korean Peninsula
to the highest level since the war.
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg is currently in Seoul, leading a U.S.
delegation to discuss how to sanction North Korea.
Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey is accompanying Steinberg as a member of the
U.S. delegation to Asian capitals to discuss issues involving financial
sanctions.
Wood said that the purpose of Steinberg's trip is to "work on a coordinated,
common approach to dealing with the threat that the North poses to the
international community through its actions."
Steinberg said in Seoul earlier in the day, "I think that the Chinese are very
actively engaged in these discussions. They've had a number of good ideas of
their own.
"We're working very closely to try to find common ground on that and I think
we're going to come up with a good result in New York and I look forward to my
efforts and conversations not only on the steps that we'll take in adopting a new
resolution but how we'll follow up with that afterwards," he said.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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