US urges North Korea to abandon nuclear program

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon announces his candidacy for the top UN post at a press conference in Seoul yesterday. PHOTO: EPA

The US ambassador to South Korea yesterday urged North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, saying that would bring benefits for the communist nation and boost global security.

"It's in the interests of all countries and peoples, but most especially it's in the interests of the North Koreans themselves that the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] shed the albatross of its nuclear program and join the international community, US ambassador Alexander Vershbow said in a speech.

"We're committed to the peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue through diplomatic methods, but we will not tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea," Vershbow said, paraphrasing comments by US President George W. Bush and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun at the summit in South Korea in November.

The US envoy made the comments in a speech sponsored by the Institute for Global Economics, a local think tank.

Vershbow said he hopes that six-party negotiations aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear program will resume soon.

A North Korean official said on Monday in Pyongyang that it was unlikely that the talks would resume soon because of the US' refusal to lift financial restrictions on businesses connected to the North.

"I don't think such six-party talks will take place in the near future," So Chol, section chief of the European Department of the North's Foreign Ministry, told Associated Press Television News in an interview in Pyongyang.

"It is because our people cannot find any evidence that the Americans are moving to lift the financial sanctions against our country," he said.

Last year, Washington slapped restrictions on a Macau-based bank and North Korean firms it said were helping the communist government engage in money laundering, counterfeiting and weapons proliferation.

The North has said it will stay away from the six-nation nuclear talks until the sanctions are lifted, but the US insists they are a matter of law and a separate issue from the arms negotiations.