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South Korea, US to negotiate joint approach on North

South Korean and US officials will meet as early as next week to follow up on an agreement between their leaders to formulate a joint approach on how to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, South Korean officials said yesterday.

North Korea was a key topic when US President George W. Bush met South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in Washington on Thursday, as the allies have increasingly differed over how to deal with the recalcitrant regime that fired off missiles in July and is feared to possibly be moving to test a nuclear bomb.

Roh's chief security aide, Song Min-soon, told reporters after the summit that the two leaders agreed to put together a "joint comprehensive approach" in efforts to move forward stalled international talks on the North's nuclear program.

"A follow-up consultation on this is expected to take place as early as next week," Song told reporters in Washington, according to a transcript of his briefing posted on the presidential office's Web site.

Bush and Roh used a White House summit to play up their common goal of pushing North Korea back to the negotiating table after a nearly year-long hiatus, but avoided airing divergent views on how to deal with Pyongyang.

The US has led efforts to impose tougher UN sanctions on North Korea. North Korea is believed to have enough nuclear material to build as many as a dozen nuclear bombs, but it has never tested one.

South Korea prefers a softer approach towards its neighbor and has warned against backing North Korea into a corner.

Tempering his usually hardline tone towards North Korea, Bush said Washington and its allies were "determined to resolve this issue peacefully but recognizes a threat posed by a country in the region armed with a nuclear weapon."

North Korea has refused to return to the talks with South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the US. It demands that Washington first ends a crackdown on its finances.

Bush said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il should resume the six-party negotiations if he wants to end his country's isolation and improve the lives of his people.

"If he were to verifiably get rid of his weapons programs, there is clearly a better way forward," Bush told reporters.

Roh did not repeat his government's earlier criticism of the US approach.

He stressed instead that South Korea had also taken measures such as suspending rice and fertilizer aid in response to North Korea's missile tests, but that it preferred not to label them sanctions "because we do not want to hurt inter-Korean relations."

However, when asked whether US threats of further sanctions jeopardized chances of bringing North Korea back to the table, he said: "This is not the appropriate time to think about the possibility of a failure of the six-party process."
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