The US has ruled out economic concessions to woo North Korea back into negotiations to halt its nuclear weapons program and said it was keeping a close watch on illegal activities by the Pyongyang government.
As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continued consultations Monday with negotiating partners, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said all the partners agreed "the North Koreans should not be rewarded for causing difficulties in the reconvening of the talks."
At the same time, he said US law enforcement agencies were working with other governments to try to counter illicit international activities by North Korea.
The pressure tactic, he said, includes tracking narcotics and smuggling activities, counterfeiting and proliferation of weapons technology.
"We have been aware for some time of North Korea's illicit activities," he said. "They have been a concern to the United States and other nations for decades."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined, meanwhile, to say whether the US was consulting with its Asian friends to mount a quarantine against North Korea.
But, he said, "we have an obligation to help protect our allies. We have an obligation to protect our respective economies."
The latest ally to consult with Rice, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, asserted North Korea may be bluffing in claiming to have nuclear weapons.
He urged North Korea to resume negotiations "as a responsible member of the international community."
After meeting with Rice, the South Korean minister told reporters they had reconfirmed the importance of a peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue through talks jointly with the US, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
North Korea is demanding one-on-one negotiations with the US. It said it was suspending the six-party talks indefinitely and announced it had produced nuclear weapons.
The last round was held last June and ended with a decision to meet again in September. But there have been no further negotiations.
"We agreed to intensify our efforts among the parties concerned," Ban said. Rice made no statement.
South Korea and Japan have been inclined to try conciliation toward the Pyongyang regime, but the Bush administration is holding out for a decision to halt nuclear weapons production before Asian allies begin giving North Korea civilian electric power and other economic benefits.
As they sat on opposite sides of a working fireplace in Rice's State Department office, having their pictures taken, Ban remarked on Seoul's close relationship with the US. Similarly, Rice said the two sides have a "very, very strong friendship and alliance."
There was no hint of differences below the surface on how to approach North Korea.
With talks in suspension since last June, and North Korea now saying the break will last indefinitely, South Korea and Japan, which sends a delegation to Washington on Saturday, are hoping for agreement with the US on a productive way to proceed.
In Seoul earlier, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young noted North Korea has yet to conduct a nuclear test, unlike other nuclear powers such as India and Pakistan.
"I believe it is early for us to call the North a nuclear state," when it has not been independently confirmed, Chung said in a speech to parliament.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS