US Secretary of State Colin Powell urged North Korea yesterday to rejoin nuclear disarmament talks if it wants international aid, while South Korea ended a high alert triggered by holes cut into a border fence.
Powell rejected the North's demand that Washington change its policy if six-nation talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons development are to continue. Meanwhile, the North accused the administration of US President George W. Bush of using the nuclear dispute to gain votes in next week's presidential election.
South Korea urged all sides in the six-nation talks to become "more creative and realistic," a comment suggesting it believed the burden was on Washington, its chief ally, as well as Pyongyang to show more flexibility in resolving the nuclear standoff.
"We agreed to continue devoting maximum efforts to achieving this goal through multilateral diplomacy and six-party talks," Powell said in a joint news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.
"Clearly, everybody wants to see the next round of six-party talks get started," Powell said, referring to the stalled talks among the US, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia. "This is the time to move forward, to bring this matter to a conclusion."
He said the goal was to help the people of North Korea have a better life, in part by providing more food aid.
"We don't intend to attack North Korea, we don't have any hostile intent notwithstanding their claims," he said. "It is this nuclear issue that is keeping the international community from assisting North Korea."
Powell, who was in Seoul following visits this week to Japan and China, also met yesterday with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and South Korea's unification minister.
Powell predicted that North Korea will return to the talks after next week's US election, South Korean officials said.
Meanwhile, South Korea said two mysterious holes found on the wire fence on the tense border with North Korea were most likely used not by communist infiltrators but by a South Korean defector to the North. It ordered its troops to stand down from a high alert.
About 40km to the north, South Korean border guards had earlier found two holes in a wire fence at the buffer zone that has separated the two Koreas since their 1950 to 1953 war.
The highly unusual discovery of the holes -- found on the fence checked daily by troops for signs of infiltration -- had triggered fears of North Korean commandos slipping through the border and led South Korea to tighten roadblocks and traffic checks north of Seoul.
"After investigating the way the fence was cut and the foot prints in the scene, we have concluded that an unidentified person crossed into the north," said Brigadier General Hwang Joong-sun, an operations officer in the South Korean military.
Three rounds of six-party talks, held in Beijing, have yielded little progress. North Korea skipped a fourth round that was to have taken place in September, and lashed out yesterday at Washington.
"It is impossible to open the talks now that the US is becoming evermore undisguised in its hostile policy toward the [North]," said North Korea's official news agency, KCNA.
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