North Korea Says Prospects Gloomy for Nuclear Talks
Date: 22-Oct-04
Country: SOUTH KOREA
China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States have held three rounds of talks and agreed to a fourth in September, but that meeting failed to materialize because Pyongyang said Washington should drop its hostile policy first.
"Its prospect remains gloomy," KCNA said of the proposed fourth round.
"The Bush administration deliberately laid a stumbling block in the way of settling the nuclear issue and pushed the talks to a stalemate as it had no willingness to seek a negotiated peaceful settlement of the issue," it said in an analysis marking the 10th anniversary of the bilateral Agreed Framework deal.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said this week more six-way talks could be held soon after the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election.
South Korea and the United States have told the North not to wait for the result of the election because a win by Democratic candidate John Kerry over President Bush would bring little change in U.S. policy.
KCNA said Bush's administration had made previously agreed deals worthless, sparked off another nuclear crisis and driven "bilateral relations to catastrophe."
The 1994 Agreed Framework froze the North's nuclear plans in return for fuel but Pyongyang later secretly restarted its atomic program and the accord subsequently collapsed.
This week, North Korea's parliamentary leader and nominal head of state wrapped up a rare trip to China during which he said Pyongyang would stay engaged in the stalled talks on its nuclear ambitions.
Kim Yong-nam, the reclusive North's second-most senior figure after leader Kim Jong-il, came under heavy pressure from China's leaders to re-engage in the talks. KCNA said China pledged aid to the North, a tactic diplomats in Seoul say Beijing has used in the past to sweeten the pill.
The latest nuclear crisis erupted two years ago when U.S. diplomats said North Korea had said it was running a covert uranium enrichment program. Pyongyang has since denied this.
KCNA said the new North Korean Human Rights Act, signed into law by Bush on Monday, was part of Washington's hostile policy to "realize its wild ambition for regime change" in the North.
The law earmarks $24 million a year to bolster human rights and market reforms in North Korea.
