NORTH KOREA: North Korea has said it has proposed six-way talks with its north Asian neighbours and the United States on its nuclear weapons programme, but made clear it had not given up hope of a one-on-one meeting with the Americans.
A foreign ministry spokesman said North Korean officials had met US counterparts in New York on Thursday and proposed holding the six-way talks, which would include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
In Washington yesterday President George W. Bush said he was hopeful the North Korean leader, Mr Kim Jong-il, "because he's hearing other voices, will make the decision to totally dismantle his nuclear weapons programme, that he will allow there to be complete transparency and verifiability."
The White House spokesman, Mr Scott McClellan, suggested that Pyongyang could see a resumed flow of foreign aid.
"It's very clear to North Korea that if they end once and for all, in a verifiable and irreversible way, their nuclear weapons programme, they stand to realise a lot of benefits from the international community," he said.
Mr McClellan said the United States would "continue to focus on the multilateral approach" to talks with North Korea. However, he did not exclude bilateral talks within that context.
"Obviously they can always directly talk to us in the multilateral setting," he told reporters. "If you're sitting at a table, someone can talk across that table."
The North Korean spokesman, quoted by Pyongyang's official news agency, said Pyongyang had "put forward a new proposal to have six-party talks without going through the three-party talks and to have the DPRK-US bilateral talks there."
The crisis arose last October when Washington said North Korea had admitted secretly working to develop nuclear arms. Tension rose as Pyongyang, insisting on face-to-face talks and a non-aggression treaty with Washington, restarted a mothballed reactor, expelled inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog and quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. - (Reuters)