North Korea dismissed any idea it wanted US President George W. Bush to lose November's US presidential election, saying yesterday the key for the winner -- Democrat or Republican -- would be to change policy towards Pyongyang.
A day earlier, the secretive communist state threatened to boost the nuclear deterrent it says it has and blamed the US stance in recent six-party talks for forcing its hand. Washington dismissed the apparently tougher line from Pyongyang as rhetoric.
Analysts say little progress on curbing North Korea's nuclear programs was now likely before the US presidential elections in November, thus giving Pyongyang more time to try to develop a nuclear capability.
Pyongyang denied it could be stalling in six-way talks over its nuclear ambitions to see whether a more amenable Democratic US president is elected, saying it did not care which party's candidate triumphed in the US presidential election.
"Whoever [is] elected US president should be willing to make a switchover in its policy toward the DPRK, drop the hostile policy toward it and express readiness to coexist with it," the official KCNA news agency said. The initials DPRK stand for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"This is a main point," it said.
"If the US makes a switchover in its policy toward the DPRK, though belatedly, progress will be made in the settlement of the nuclear issue," KCNA said.
In Seoul, South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator voiced hopes that initial working group meetings, which were agreed at the Beijing talks, could be held between April and June before a new round of six-party talks.
"We will make our best efforts to get the North Korean nuclear issue to a settlement phase through a third round of talks after holding one or two working group meetings during the second quarter of the year," Yonhap news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck as saying.
The US has demanded the "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement" of the North's nuclear programs that are believed to involve plutonium and uranium.
The North Korean statement on Wednesday voiced anger at such demands and followed similar shows of defiance since six-way talks involving the two Koreas, China, the US, Japan and Russia in Beijing last month.
"The reckless US stance only pushes the DPRK to further increase its nuclear deterrent force," the state-run KCNA news agency on Wednesday cited a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.
The impasse "does nothing bad to the DPRK as it will have time to take more necessary steps with increased pace", he said.
In Washington, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said North Korea's latest statement did not reflect the position Pyongyang took at the negotiations.
US officials say they believe North Korea already possesses one or two nuclear weapons and could be making more.
The US has said it is in no hurry to put together a deal because it wants to take time to come up with an accord that will stick.
However, analysts on North Korea said the administration of Bush, who has branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and pre-war Iraq, may prefer to intensify the pressure.
"The administration seems incapable of making any kind of deal or doing serious negotiations," said Daniel Pinkston, a North Korean expert at the Monterey Institute's Center for Non-Proliferation Studies in California.
Pinkston said he saw small signs of gradual convergence on the plutonium program, although he expected no progress before the US elections.
"The North Koreans are going to wait until after the election because they saw a big policy reverse after Clinton," he said.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS