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| Wednesday, 7 January 2004 |
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NKorea offers "bold" concession on nuclear crisis PYONGYANG, Tuesday (AFP) North Korea said Tuesday it would refrain from testing and producing nuclear weapons and freeze its nuclear facilities in a "bold" concession to the United States. North Korea "is set to refrain from test and production of nuclear weapons and stop even operating nuclear power industry for a peaceful purpose as first-phase measures of the package solution. This cannot but be one more bold concession," Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said. Amid efforts to convene a new round of six-nation talks to end the nuclear crisis, North Korea said it expected concessions from Washington. In return for the proposed freeze, Washington would deliver "simultaneous" actions including removing North Korea from a State Department list of countries accused of sponsoring terrorism, lifting sanctions and resuming energy aid, the agency said in a dispatch monitored here. Earlier The United States on Monday volleyed back a North Korean warning that "the ball is in the US court" over a nuclear showdown, bluntly telling Pyongyang it would get no rewards just for showing up at six-nation crisis talks. Amid signs that the meeting, originally pencilled in for Beijing in December, may now slip into next month at the earliest, Washington rammed home its view that a solution to the crisis must be discussed at talks, not before them. "We are continuing to state pretty categorically, that we're not going to offer incentives for North Korea to return to the negotiating table," said State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli. "We are prepared to resume talks without preconditions. No other party has set preconditions. "We urge the North to drop its preconditions and move to another round of talks where all parties can seek to achieve progress on the issues of concern." |
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