Communist North Korea said yesterday it would not return to six-nation talks on its nuclear program until the week of Sept. 12, blaming the delay on military exercises between the US and South Korea.
A foreign ministry spokesman quoted by the official KCNA news agency said the delay in the discussions, which had been due to resume in Beijing this week, was due to the war games which he likened to "spitting" at the North.
"It is unimaginable for [North Korea] to sit at the negotiating table with the United States at a time when the powder-reeking war exercises targeted against it are under way," the spokesman said.
He said Pyongyang wanted to resume the talks during the week of Sept. 12 when the dust had settled from the annual war games, which began on Aug. 22 and which North Korea has said could be a trial run for an invasion.
The spokesman said the US had been told of the decision through the UN's mission in New York, and Pyongyang was showing the "utmost magnanimity" in offering to re-open the talks in the middle of next month.
He blasted the war games as well as US President George W. Bush's decision to appoint an envoy for human rights in the secretive Stalinist regime, which has said it has nuclear weapons and must build more to stop US aggression.
A fourth round of negotiations on Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions involving the two Koreas, China, the US, Japan and Russia broke up on Aug. 7 after 13 days of intense and sometimes fiery discussions.
All six sides had agreed to meet again this week, after the talks recessed at an apparent impasse over the North's demand to be allowed to use nuclear power for peaceful, civilian energy purposes -- something Washington rejected.
"The important thing is all the parties agreed to resume the talks and we all have kept contact and negotiation in the framework of the six-party talks," China's Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Dawei told Xinhua news agency.
North Korea has long caused concern in Washington and among its regional neighbors with its nuclear program. It raised the stakes in February by declaring it had produced atomic bombs and would manufacture more.
Bush in the past has named North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" while Pyongyang has labeled the US an imperialist aggressor nation and worse, accusing it of planning an invasion.
International talks on defusing the crisis on the Korean Peninsula resumed last month after the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang had led to a break of more than one year.
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