North Korea has told a Russian envoy that it is willing to discuss its uranium enrichment program and a suspension of nuclear tests if six-party disarmament talks resume, state media said yesterday.
“[North Korea] expressed its stand that it can go out to the six-party talks without any precondition,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement published by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The move adds momentum to diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions on the Korean Peninsula, which soared with the North’s shelling of a frontier island in November last year that killed four South Koreans and sparked brief fears of war.
At talks last weekend with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin, the North said it would not oppose talks on the uranium enrichment program at the six-party forum, a ministry spokesman was quoted as saying.
Russia called for “constructive” measures from Pyongyang, including a moratorium on nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches and allowing international experts access to uranium enrichment facilities, the news agency said.
The North said it was willing to discuss issues already hammered out in a nuclear deal in 2005 “on the principle of simultaneous action” if the talks are resumed, the agency said.
The deal, which Pyongyang has so far failed to implement, calls for the North’s denuclearization in return for economic aid, diplomatic recognition and the establishment of a permanent peace regime.
The Russian envoy visited Pyongyang between Friday and Monday, meeting North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun and other North Korean officials, the news agency said.
The trip comes as South Korea deepens efforts to gain international condemnation of the North’s nuclear program. Cho Hyun-dong, the South Korean deputy nuclear envoy, left for Russia yesterday to meet Borodavkin.
Pyongyang sparked security fears in November last year when it disclosed an apparently functional uranium enrichment plant to visiting US experts.
The North said it was a peaceful energy project, but experts said it could hand Pyongyang a second route to making atomic bombs on top of its existing plutonium stockpile.
Experts estimate that Pyongyang has enough plutonium to build possibly six to eight small atomic weapons.
Six-party talks grouping the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, the US and China have been deadlocked since Pyongyang walked out in April 2009 and staged its second nuclear test a month later.
Seoul wants the UN Security Council to address the North’s uranium program, but an attempt last month to publish a UN report criticizing the North failed amid opposition from Beijing, Pyongyang’s strong ally.
Russia has backed South Korea’s call for the Security Council to debate the North’s uranium program.
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