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North Korea demands US withdrawal from peninsula before resuming talks
North Korea has issued a detailed statement on its terms for dialogue with the United States, after weeks of tensions.
The demands from the North’s top military body include the withdrawal of all UN sanctions imposed due to Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests, and a US pledge not to engage in “nuclear war practice” with the South. It said denuclearisation of the peninsula should begin with the withdrawal of US weapons.
Seoul was swift to dismiss the North’s conditions as incomprehensible and illogical. The foreign ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young said: “We again strongly urge North Korea to stop this kind of insistence that we cannot totally understand and go down the path of a wise choice.”
The Japanese news agency Kyodo said the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, had called for increased pressure on the North.
Leonid Petrov, an expert on the North at the Australian National University, said of the North’s statement: “It’s a good sign, they are prepared to negotiate, but they are demanding an exorbitant and impermissibly high price … The game will continue.”
Pyongyang has issued threats against Seoul and Washington, withdrawn workers from an industrial complex it runs with the South and appears to have prepared for a possible missile test. It was angered by the tightening of sanctions over its third nuclear test in February and joint US-South Korean military drills.
“Dialogue and war cannot co-exist,” the North’s national defence commission said in a statement carried by the official news agency KCNA on Thursday. “If the United States and the puppet South have the slightest desire to avoid the sledge-hammer blow of our army and the people … and truly wish dialogue and negotiations, they must make the resolute decision.”
More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr…s-us-talks
2013-04-18 18:35:42
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