The upcoming six-party talks on North Korean disarmament will fail unless Pyongyang makes a commitment to abandon its nuclear weapons, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.
"What we really need is a strategic decision on the part of the North that they are indeed ready to give up their nuclear weapons program," Rice told reporters after the meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura in Tokyo.
"Without that, these talks cannot be successful," she said.
She also said Washington strongly supports Japan's efforts to resolve the cases of Japanese kidnapped decades ago by North Korean agents. The North has released five of the victims, but Japan believes other victims may still remain.
"We agreed that there must be an actual progress in the next round of talks, and we expect North Korea's serious and constructive handling," Machimura said. "We also confirmed the importance of close cooperation among Japan, the United States and South Korea on the issue."
Rice also expressed no objections to a South Korean donation of 453,592 tonnes tons of rice to the North, saying the gesture will not undercut the US negotiating position heading into the six-party talks.
Rice said South Korea was responding to "miserable conditions" in North Korea and noted that the US itself in recent days offered 45,395 tonnes of food aid to Pyongyang.
Rice was also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi later in the day before heading to South Korea.
Despite the call for concessions from the North, Rice pledged the US' commitment to the upcoming talks, which are scheduled to resume the week of July 25 in Beijing.
"We're ready to negotiate seriously. We are prepared to roll up our sleeves and do everything we can to make these talks a success," she said, adding that all of the partners in the talks -- China, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the US -- were aiming toward the common goal of a nuclear-free North Korea.
Ahead of the talks, Japanese officials said Japan, South Korea and the US were trying to arrange three-way talks on North Korea before the broader meetings.
"We believe we should have Japan-US-South Korea talks as soon as possible, and we are currently arranging a date and a venue," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said. "We are hoping to have a meeting by the weekend."
North Korea announced over the weekend that it would end its yearlong boycott of the six-party talks on its nuclear weapons programs.
Meanwhile, South Korea said yesterday that it offered energy aid to the North as an incentive to encourage it to return to nuclear disarmament talks.
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said Seoul would provide electricity to the North if it agrees to give up nuclear weapons at the revived six-nation arms talks. South Korean officials had previously refused to give details of the aid proposal, which apparently pushed the North to agree over the weekend to end its boycott of the nuclear negotiations.
Senior North Korean officials told a visiting columnist from The New York Times that one of two nuclear reactors the North resumed constructing this year -- which could potentially generate more weapons-grade plutonium -- could be completed this year or next.
"To defend our sovereignty and our system ... we cannot but increase our number of nuclear weapons as a deterrent force," Nicholas Kristof quoted Li Chan-bok, a North Korean army general, as saying.
If the US carries out a military strike to destroy the reactors, Li said the result would be "all-out war" and didn't rule out the use of nuclear weapons, Kristof wrote in a column yesterday.
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