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S Korea discounts North's nuke threat

North Korea's envoy in Britain said Pyongyang had a nuclear deterrent ready to use, but South Korea played down the assertion on Friday and said there was no sign the North would walk away from international talks.

North Korea's envoy in Britain, Ri Yong Ho, said in London on Thursday Pyongyang had a nuclear deterrent that was not only ready but powerful enough to deter any US attack.

Asked about Ri's remarks, South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun told reporters: "It's hard to see any consistency in various North Korean remarks, and it's more important to consider the overall trend than any one particular outburst."

He did not elaborate on what he meant by an overall trend, but said he believed recent statements by Pyongyang were part of its negotiating posture before six-country nuclear talks on a year-old crisis over the North's nuclear arms ambitions.

In Washington, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) told reporters he saw a good chance those talks would resume.

On Thursday, Pyongyang reacted to the planned suspension of an international project to build nuclear power stations in North Korea by threatening to bar the removal of documents and equipment from the site.

The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the consortium building the reactors, is expected to approve a US proposal to suspend the project for one year pending diplomatic attempts to halt Pyongyang's nuclear arms programs. A formal decision is expected by Nov. 21.

A statement by North Korea's Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang would demand compensation for the US-proposed suspension -- a move it said was "nothing surprising", but raised doubts about Washington's interest in diplomatic talks on the nuclear crisis.

Asked if Seoul thought the suspension would turn North Korea away from talks, Jeong said: "The North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman's statement contained no hint that it would not join the six-way talks."

The six-way talks involve the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan. They met inconclusively in Beijing in August and are expected to meet again before the end of the year.

In Tokyo, the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun quoted sources in Washington as saying the US would offer the North a two-step security assurance to try to restart the talks. South Korea protested against the North Korean threat to block the removal of equipment from the reactor site, but Jeong said he saw it as part of Pyongyang's negotiating tactics.

Jeong said North Korea might renew demands for compensation for electricity that would have been generated by KEDO's nuclear plants. The reactor project is based on a 1994 agreement by which the North Koreans froze their nuclear arms program in return for two light-water reactors. The US initially sent fuel oil to meet energy needs, but stopped a year ago.

The agreement began to fall apart in October last year when the US announced North Korea had violated it by working on secret uranium enrichment projects. The US has favored closing down the reactor project, because experts argue North Korea cannot be trusted with fissile material.

North and South Korea agreed late on Thursday to set up a permanent centre for family reunions near Kumgang mountain just north of the Demilitarized Zone bisecting the peninsula.
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