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North Korea: Ready for U.S. Talks, Official Says North Korea is prepared to resume talks with the United States at any time, despite U.S. President George W. Bush’s harsh rhetoric during his State of the Union address, North Korea’s U.N. representative said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 4). If the United States is willing to talk with North Korea as equals and without prior conditions, “there will be no problem at all,” even with Bush’s comments placing North Korea into an “axis of evil” along with Iran and Iraq, said representative Pak Gil Yon (see GSN, Feb. 4). “As we always say, a nice word will be answered with a nice word,” Pak said. U.S. preconditions for any talks, however, are “not acceptable at all,” he said. Last week, Bush appeared to lay out preconditions by telling North Korea to pull back some of its military forces from the border with South Korea and to stop exporting weapons, according to Reuters (see GSN, Feb. 7). “We would be more than happy to enter into a dialogue with them if that be the case,” Bush said. This week, however, U.S. State Secretary Colin Powell said the United States has no preconditions for talks with North Korea. “We are prepared to talk to the North Koreans any time, any place, anywhere, under any set of conditions and with no previously set agenda,” Powell said during testimony before the House International Relations Committee. “Let’s start talking” (Irwin Arieff, Reuters/Yahoo.com, Feb. 7).
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