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US refuses request for direct talks with North Korea: report

South Korea has urged the US to engage in direct talks with North Korea about concerns over a long-range missile but Washington has refused, a news report said yesterday, amid intensified diplomatic efforts to halt apparent moves by Pyongyang toward a launch.

A high-ranking government official said Seoul had pressed for the US-North Korea talks, but that Washington was reluctant because it felt that the North's invitation shouldn't have been made public, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. The official wasn't identified.

A North Korean diplomat said last week that the country wanted to speak directly to the US over its missile concerns, repeating its long-held desire for bilateral contact with the US. But Washington has refused, saying it would only see the North Koreans at six-nation nuclear arms talks in Beijing, which haven't taken place since November due to the North's boycott.

South Korea also believes it was meaningful that the North earlier this month invited chief US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill to Pyongyang, the unidentified South Korean official said, while appearing to indicate that any such trip wasn't expected anytime soon, according to Yonhap.

The official said the urgency of the situation surrounding the North's apparent moves for a test-launch was still high and that the South Korean government "is still in preparations for the worst-case scenario," Yonhap reported.

Song Min-soon, a top presidential security adviser, said yesterday that South Korea was closely cooperating with the US in devising countermeasures against the North's launch, but noted there were differences between the allies.

"It would be nice if all of our opinions concurred at every stage in the process of coordinating, but this is not easy," Song said in a statement, adding that it was taking "a lot" of effort to narrow the differences.

"It is wrong for North Korea to escalate tension this way," Song said.

"If North Korea goes ahead with the launch, the government will surely take due measures," Song said.

On other diplomatic fronts, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon was traveling to China yesterday evening for talks on the issue.

Ban's two-day trip to Beijing comes as "there is a growing need to intensify discussions between South Korea and China on North Korea's recent missile issue and the nuclear issue," said a foreign ministry statement.
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