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North Korea has called for peace talks with the US and said it wants an end to punitive UN economic sanctions before it will re-enter international talks over relinquishing its illegal arsenal of nuclear weapons.
By Peter Foster in Beijing
Published: 12:59PM GMT 11 Jan 2010
A foreign ministry statement setting out Pyongyang's demands was issued a month after the US special envoy Stephen Bosworth made a landmark visit to the North to discuss a possible return to the negotiating table by the North.
"The conclusion of the peace treaty will help terminate the hostile relations between the DPRK [North Korea] and the US and positively promote the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula at a rapid tempo," the North's statement said.
Analysts said Pyongyang's demands, while "unrealistic", were a diplomatic gambit that showed the pariah state was heading back to the six-party talks with the US, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea which they formally abandoned last April.
North Korea has been suffering growing economic turmoil following the imposition of sanctions last year as punishment for conducting two illegal ballistic missile tests and a second underground nuclear detonation.
Diplomatic pressure has been mounting in recent months to bring the North back into talks which forged agreements in 2005 and 2007 that later broke down after it became clear that Pyongyang was not serious about giving up its nuclear weapons.
Progress on re-starting the talks now remains log-jammed over which should side make the first concessions, with the current US administration saying it will make substantial concessions before Pyongyang takes concrete steps towards disarmament.
However Baek Seung-Joo, of Seoul's Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, said the statement indicated the North was probably preparing to re-enter talks in the coming months.
"There exists a discrepancy between North Korea and the others, notably South Korea, in sequencing the tasks of denuclearisation and striking a peace treaty on the Korean peninsula," he explained.
Kim Yong-Hyun, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University, added that the North's proposal of a peace treaty was "unrealistic" - since it has never included South Korea - but was instead aimed at "securing more concessions" before talks resuming talks.
However despite the apparent progress on negotiations following Mr Bosworth's visit, relations between Pyongyang and the US remain combative.
On Monday Robert King, Obama's special envoy for human rights in North Korea, said the country's "appalling" record on human rights was another stumbling preventing normalization of relations.
The North is estimated to hold more than 150,000 people as political prisoners in its infamous gulags.
"Improved relations between the United States and North Korea will have to involve greater respect for human rights by North Korea," said Mr King after a meeting with South Korea's foreign minister.
Source :
North Korea calls for peace talks with US over nuclear arsenal - Telegraph
