North Korea believes the crisis over its nuclear weapons program could be quickly resolved if the US agreed to leave the communist state in peace, a German parliamentarian said yesterday.
Hartmut Koschyk, a member of the Bundestag lower house of parliament, visited North Korea last week to meet officials, including Kim Yong-nam -- the nominal head of state and head of the country's parliament, the Supreme People's Assembly.
Koschyk told reporters North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su-hon had outlined Pyongyang's position on the nuclear crisis, which began in October last year when the US said the North had admitted to a covert atomic weapons program.
"The main demand toward the United States is a mutual promise not to want to fight each other and to normalize relations," he quoted Choe as saying.
"If the United States, and I'm quoting word for word here, were prepared to exist peacefully with North Korea, then the nuclear question could be solved quickly," Koschyk said, quoting the vice minister.
He said a senior foreign ministry official had told him the main problem was the fundamental lack of trust between the US and North Korea.
North Korea told China last week it was prepared in principle to join it at a second round of nuclear talks with Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US.
Koschyk, who also visited Pyongyang in May last year, said officials did not elaborate on when they expected the talks to take place. He also said he had been the first Western politician to meet a vice defense minister.
He did not discuss nuclear weapons with Colonel-General Ryo Chun-sok, but the vice minister did confirm that the powerful armed forces had agreed Pyongyang should seek more details about US President George W. Bush's offer last month of security guarantees in return for an end to the North's nuclear ambitions.
Koschyk said there were more vehicles on the roads compared with his visit last year and German aid groups had told him farmers' markets were spreading. He said he saw trucks packed with people and other North Koreans with handcarts heading to such a market in a regional town he visited.
He said North Korean officials had specifically called for intensified bilateral trade relations and told him German companies would receive the same conditions as South Korean firms if they set up in a special industrial zone being established in the city of Kaesong, just north of the Demilitarized Zone border.
Koschyk said a German parliamentary delegation would visit North Korea in the middle of next year and the Bundestag was still prepared to host a meeting of North and South Korean parliamentarians in Berlin.
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