Thu, Jan 09, 2003 page1

• Washington signals change of tack

  • REUTERS AND AP
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  North Korea accused the US yesterday of increasing the danger of war on the Korean peninsula, just hours after Washington changed tack and signalled a willingness to talk about their nuclear standoff.

  The reclusive communist state's KCNA news agency made no mention of the US offer, nor of the UN watchdog's deadline for it to readmit nuclear inspectors within weeks, but decried Washington's "racket of a nuclear threat".

  The US administration, which had previously insisted North Korea roll back recent steps to revive its nuclear weapons plans before any talks, announced its new position on Tuesday after holding talks in Washington with South Korea and Japan.

  But it insisted that it would not allow North Korea's nuclear programme to become a bargaining chip. Pyongyang has threatened war in the event of US economic sanctions over the issue.

  "The `nuclear issue' that renders the situation on the Korean peninsula strained is a product of the US strategy to dominate the world whereby it is working hard to bring a holocaust of a nuclear war to the Korean nation, calling for a pre-emptive nuclear strike after deploying lots of nuclear weapons in and around South Korea," KCNA said.

  Meanwhile, in further diplomatic efforts to end the crisis, a South Korean presidential envoy, Yim Sung-joon, was due at the White House yesterday while US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, who led Tuesday's talks with South Korean and Japanese officials, was to visit Asia at the end of the week.

  "The United States is willing to talk to North Korea about how it will meet its obligations to the international community," the three countries said in a joint statement.

  "However, the US delegation stressed that the United States will not provide quid pro quos to North Korea to live up to its existing obligations."

  The US has branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran and believes it to be building nuclear weapons.

  North Korea's riposte is that Washington is the world's biggest producer and seller of weapons of mass destruction.

  South Koreans have been less worried about a perceived North Korean threat than some of their Western allies because they have lived with Pyongyang's bombastic rhetoric for half a century.

  "What is more serious to us is a war over Iraq because of what it will do to oil prices," said Chung Doo-sun, a fund manager with CJ Investment Trust Management.

  "War in Iraq is an uncontrollable risk to us. In whatever direction the North Korean issue is developing, we know it will not lead to a war."

  North and South Korea are technically still at war because the truce that ended their 1950-53 conflict never led to a peace treaty, but both look forward to eventual reunification of a country which dates back some 5,000 years.

  "People do not think that there is going to be a war," a Unification Ministry official told Reuters.

  "People want to solve this issue through dialogue or other peaceful tactics, not through military force."

  South Korea's benchmark stock index stayed steady in the morning, partly on the US comments on North Korea, but slipped in the afternoon. The South Korean won was slightly lower but North Korea was not a factor, dealers said.

  KCNA reported that more than 100,000 residents of the North's capital, Pyongyang, massed on Tuesday to show support for Kim Jong-il's leadership on the 55th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK -- the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

  A banner in the square, which is named after Kim Il-sung, Kim's late father and the state's founder, summed up sentiment.

  "Let's make a great victory this year ... the 55th anniversary of DPRK establishment on the back of a god-like leader."

  North Korea denounced Japan, meanwhile, for meddling in its business.

  "The nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula arose because of the United States and it has nothing to do with Japan," the South's Yonhap news agency quoted Pyongyang Radio as saying.

  "Japan has the effrontery to intervene in the nuclear matter and complicate the issue. It is none of their business."

  Back in South Korea military veterans and citizens burned an effigy of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il yesterday during a rally to support US military presence.

  "Long live the South Korea-US solidarity!" 400 people chanted during the rally in front of the US Air Force's Osan Air Base, 70km south of Seoul.

  They burned a North Korean flag and an effigy of Kim Jong Il holding a missile.
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