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Rice, Ban urge N. Korea to return to nuke talks+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)WASHINGTON, Jan. 19_(Kyodo) _ South Korean Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Ban Ki Moon and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice agreed Thursday to press North Korea to "promptly" return to the six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear programs. Ban and Rice reached the agreement as part of broad-ranging accords during their first meeting under a new bilateral strategic dialogue, according to a joint statement issued by the two nations. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department confirmed that Christopher Hill, the top U.S. negotiator in the talks, met his North Korean counterpart on Wednesday in Beijing and called for resuming the six-party negotiations "without precondition" as the United States would not remove its recent financial sanctions related to the North's illicit activities. North Korea has said it would not return to the talks as long as the United States continues financial sanctions on a Macao-based bank that allegedly distributed counterfeit U.S. currency and laundered money for North Korea and also against North Korean entities allegedly engaged in proliferating weapons of mass destruction. The United States says the sanctions are law enforcement matters unrelated to the nuclear talks. "We both urge the North Koreans to come back to the talks without conditions because North Korea also is being told by the international community that it has to be a Korea Peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons and that North Korea must dismantle its nuclear program," Rice told reporters before the meeting at the State Department. "We hope that we'll have early resumption of the six-party process," Ban told the reporters. In New York, Ban told reporters on Wednesday that he hopes North Korea will return to the table in the near future, possibly by the end of February, citing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's Jan. 10-18 visit to China as a positive sign. Speaking along with Rice on Thursday, Ban said, "We need to look closely at what Chairman Kim Jong Il discussed with Chinese leaders recently and we take note of what Chairman Kim Jong Il said that he would reaffirm the commitment to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and also commit to resolve North Korean nuclear issue peacefully through dialogue, particularly through six-party talks." Shortly after Kim's visit, Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, met North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan in a meeting hosted by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei. "Assistant Secretary Hill sent a strong, clear message that we are prepared to resume the six-party talks and start work in implementation of the framework agreement that was agreed to on Sept. 19, and that we would hope that the North Korean government was ready to return to those talks without precondition, as well, at the earliest possible date," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. Hill "also made clear again that these issues (of sanctions) are separate and that the United States...is going to continue to take steps to prevent illegal activities that may affect us or any other country, whether that's involvement in drug trafficking, or moneylaundering or counterfeiting," McCormack said. During the September six-party session, North Korea agreed in a joint statement of principles to abandon its nuclear programs in exchange for energy and security assurances, although details, such as how to implement the agreement, were put off for a future round of talks. Ban and Rice said in their statement that they "agreed that the DPRK must return promptly to the six-party talks and that the focus of future discussions in Beijing must be on steps to implement the Sept. 19 joint statement." DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name. The last round of six-party talks ended in November with little progress other than an agreement to meet again, possibly in January. The six nations involved in the talks are the United States, North and South Korea, Russia, China and Japan. Ban and Rice also "expressed hope that a basis for a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula can be explored in the course of resolving the North Korean nuclear issue," while reaffirming that such efforts to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War will be based on the U.S.-South Korea alliance. |