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| Saturday, 1 May 2004 |
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Bush rejects direct dialogue with North Korea over nuclear question WASHINGTON, Friday (AFP) US President George W. Bush will not enter into direct talks with North Korea to end its nuclear drive, his spokesman said Thursday amid seemingly new enthusiasm by Pyongyang to end the standoff. "That approach didn't work previously," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "North Korea violated their agreement." He said Bush believed it was "important to work through the multilateral six-party talks to bring about a peaceful diplomatic resolution to this concern." North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's visit to China last week appeared to have given greater momentum to the talks between China, South Korea, Japan, the United States, North Korea and Russia to resolve the nuclear issue. Pyongyang earlier announced it would attend May 12 talks in Beijing aimed at setting up a fresh round of the six-nation negotiations by the end of June. A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman had said Pyongyang wanted to discuss compensation for freezing its nuclear programs at the working group meeting. John Kerry, Bush's presumptive rival in the November presidential elections, charged Wednesday that the incumbent had failed in his policy on North Korea. Kerry wants direct talks with Pyongyang on a range of issues, not only the nuclear question. But McClellan, citing North Korea's broken promise, rejected any notion that Bush was willing to bargain on compensations for North Korea and open a direct dialogue with North Korea. He stressed that the nuclear crisis in the Korean peninsula "is a very serious concern of ours. "It's a very serious concern for countries in the region. And that's why we're working together with China and South Korea and Japan and others to bring about a peaceful resolution." |
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