The US urged North Korea yesterday to make the hard decisions that will lead to the dismantling of its nuclear weapons programs, as Pyongyang agonized over which direction to take.
The Stalinist state is the only country at the talks which also involve China, Japan, South Korea and Russia that has not agreed to a draft statement outlining how it would dump its atomic arsenal and what it would get in return.
It had been expected to deliver its verdict on Wednesday but snubbed a meeting of the chief envoys to the negotiations.
"I think everybody knows the score right now. We are waiting for the North Koreans to give an answer to the Chinese on the draft," the US chief delegate, Christopher Hill, told reporters.
"They have got to make real decisions. We need to have a situation where we know precisely what they have agreed to do, what they have agreed to abandon," he said. "We cannot have a situation where the DRPK pretends to abandon its nuclear programs and we pretend to believe them," he said referring to the North by its official name the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea.
China, the North's closest ally, has been driving the negotiations and was desperately working to salvage something from the discussions, holding talks with all the delegations late into the night Wednesday and again yesterday.
Hill said he had no plans to meet again bilaterally with the North Koreans, with the six-party talks in their 10th day.
"There is no reason to meet them now," said Hill, the assistant secretary of state for Asian and Pacific affairs, who has held eight one-on-one meetings with North Korea's envoy Kim Kye-gwan.
"They know exactly what the situation is. We need clarity from them on these principles. That is so necessary," he said.
The fourth round of talks, which come after a break of more than a year, have been the longest since the process began in 2003. They resumed after Pyongyang raised the stakes in February by declaring it already has nuclear bombs.
All previous rounds ended inconclusively. A collapse of the latest round could prompt Washington to take the issue to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, a move vigorously opposed by China.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted sources as saying yesterday the main sticking point was how far the North's nuclear dismantlement should go.
It said Pyongyang objected to part of the joint statement that related to "the abandonment of nuclear programs," which was taken to include programs for civilian use.
Instead it wants the wording to be changed to dismantling "nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons-related programs," the agency said.
South Korea's chief delegate Song Min-soon has previously said the framework agreement centered around North Korea ridding itself of nuclear weapons in return for a normalization of ties with the US and Japan.
Japanese and South Korean media reports have added that it also included the provision of a security guarantee and electricity and fuel oil aid to the impoverished North.
But they said it does not include a key North Korean demand that concessions be delivered simultaneously with the dismantling of its atomic weapons program. The US has persistently demanded that the North give up its weapons programs before it gets aid and energy.
In a sign that the talks are nearing an end, Russia's chief delegate Alexandre Alexeyev returned to Beijing yesterday after leaving for Moscow at the weekend to attend to domestic affairs.
The Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying that the talks would last "one or two" more days.
The crisis erupted in October 2002 when the US accused the North of running a secretive uranium enrichment program. Pyongyang has always denied this.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to