North Korea said yesterday it still was ready for six-way talks to resolve a crisis over its nuclear ambitions but it would have no dialogue with US Undersecretary of State John Bolton after his sharp criticism of the country and its leader.
Bolton, widely seen as "hawkish" on North Korea, earlier this week referred to life there as a "hellish nightmare," where its leader Kim Jong-il lived like royalty while keeping hundreds of thousands of his people in prison camps and millions more mired in poverty.
Analysts said North Korea's decision not to pull out of six-way talks, in spite of the scathing US criticism, showed that the reclusive country had few options left.
"If the six-way talks don't take place, then what's left are a tougher U.S. stance and the UN Security Council," said Yu Suk-ryul, a North Korea expert at the South Korea's Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security.
Pyongyang said on Saturday that any move by the US to bring the crisis to the UN Security Council would derail the planned talks and could lead to war.
North Korea and the US said on Friday they had agreed to hold six-way talks on the nuclear standoff. China, Japan, Russia and South Korea will also attend the sessions.
Pyongyang previously insisted on bilateral talks with the US. Washington had rejected that option, demanding North Korea dismantle its nuclear weapons programs first.
In a related development, a Japanese newspaper reported yesterday that the US and Japan were considering forming a multinational nuclear inspection team to ensure the North abandons its nuclear weapons programs completely.
Pyongyang however signaled its continued desire for talks in a report by the official KCNA news agency.
"There is no change in our stand on holding the six-party talks including the bilateral talks between the DPRK and the US for the peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula," KCNA quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying.
DPRK is an acronym for North Korea.
The latest KCNA report spoke of Bolton's "political vulgarity and psychopathological condition" and said North Korea would not deal with him or consider him an official of the US administration.
Bolton has called for the UN to have its Security Council take "appropriate and timely action" to send a signal to the world it took the North Korean crisis seriously.
The prospect of fresh talks comes after months of tension following Washington's announcement last October that Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a covert nuclear weapons programme.
Yu said Pyongyang appeared to be optimistic about one-on-one meetings with US officials during the six-way talks.
In Japan, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said the inspection team would likely consist of experts mainly from the US, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea.
No government officials were immediately available to comment on the report, which quoted US and Japanese government sources.
The planned inspection team would work independently of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, Yomiuri said.
The multinational group of experts would inspect not only the Yongbyon nuclear complex but also undeclared plutonium and uranium-enrichment facilities as well as facilities built to make and test detonators for nuclear weapons, Yomiuri said in a lead article.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS