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| Friday, 11 July 2003 |
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N. Korea 'prepared for talks or war' SEOUL, Thursday (Reuters) North Korea wanted a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis on the peninsula but was prepared for war if the United States resorted to the use of force, its officials told South Korea on Thursday. North Korean Chief Cabinet Councillor Kim Ryong-song did not refer to the United States by name as he issued Pyongyang's stock appeal to South Korea to join hands against "foreign forces" that were threatening the Korean nation. "We are prepared both for talks if certain foreign forces want dialogue and to go to war if they want war," Kim said at the start of North-South ministerial talks at a Seoul hotel. Outside, about 100 South Koreans burned North Korean flags in a protest. Kim's remarks in the presence of reporters did not address the assessment issued on Wednesday by South Korea's intelligence agency that North Korea had recently reprocessed spent nuclear fuel rods and tested devices used to trigger atomic explosions. He said North Korea's position was that the nine-month-old nuclear standoff should resolved through dialogue. "But if the foreign forces ignore our position or use force, then we will demonstrate our power," he said. South Korea strongly urged the North to agree to early multilateral talks and said Pyongyang would swiftly gain international help if it halted its quest for nuclear weapons, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry spokesman Shin On-sang. South Korea's National Intelligence Service said on Wednesday that North Korea recently reprocessed a small number of its estimated 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods and had also tested devices used to trigger atomic explosions. The report prompted politicians from all parties to call on South Korea to cut off all cash flows to North Korea amid suspicions that Pyongyang was using Seoul's aid to build nuclear weapons. China, an old ally of North Korea which is hosting South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun this week, said the intelligence report had yet to be confirmed but that Beijing was against any testing of nuclear weapons in the region. U.S. officials said Washington still had questions about North Korea's nuclear fuel reprocessing activities despite the South Korean intelligence report. "Our assessment of where they are on reprocessing is not 100 percent clear," he told Reuters. |
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