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U.S. Keeps Pressure on North Korea Outside Six-Party Nuclear Disarmament Talks
The United States would continue to press North Korea on a variety of issues as nuclear negotiations continue, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview published yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 28). Rice cited an interdiction earlier this year of a North Korean shipment of WMD-related materials, as well as a U.S. Treasury Department decision in May to sanction a Macau-based bank for facilitating a North Korean money-laundering operation (see GSN, Sept. 9). “So we’re not sitting still while the six-party talks continue,” Rice told USA Today. North Korea’s delegation to multilateral disarmament talks protested the sanctioning of the Macau-based bank during the last round of negotiations, AP reported. Rice said Washington would not enter bilateral discussions on the issue. “They (North Korea) know what they’re doing. They don’t need to have a bilateral on how to stop counterfeiting other people’s money,” she said. “Just stop doing it” (Yonhap, Nov. 29). Meanwhile, the new U.S. ambassador to South Korea today expressed skepticism of North Korea’s commitment to nuclear disarmament, Reuters reported. “It remains to be seen whether North Korea is truly prepared to eliminate its nuclear programs, and to do so in a prompt and verifiable manner,” said Alexander Vershbow, who replaced Christopher Hill, now the top U.S. negotiator at the six-party talks. Vershbow said if Pyongyang was prepared to disarm, the United States was ready to respond by considering replacing a Korean War armistice with a peace treaty (Jon Herskovitz, Reuters, Nov. 30).
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