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North Korea: Washington Says Talks With Pyongyang Will Happen The United States said yesterday it intends to hold direct talks with Pyongyang, the Baltimore Sun reported (see GSN, Feb. 3). “Of course, we’re going to have to have direct talks with the North Koreans. There’s no question about it,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage during testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The White House is preparing for the talks by meeting with allies in the region and in Europe, said U.S. officials. There is not, however, a timetable in place for the talks and Washington wants an international consensus before entering discussions so “this thing doesn’t rub entirely off on us to come up with a solution” (Mark Matthews, Baltimore Sun, Feb. 5). Armitage said Washington is wary of North Korea selling its nuclear material. “Our major fear is that North Korea would pass on fissile material,” he said (Barbara Slavin, USA Today, Feb. 5). “I don’t think that, given the poverty of North Korea, that it would be too long after she got a good amount of fissile material … that she would be inclined to engage with somebody, a nonstate actor or a rogue state,” Armitage added. He also told the committee that the difference between North Korea and Iraq is the intent of their leaders. “We know, we think, what (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Il wants,” Armitage said. “Some economic benefits and things of that nature,” he added. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, wants to “intimidate, dominate and attack,” Armitage said (Matthews, Baltimore Sun). Japan said yesterday that international dialogue is needed in the wake of the Bush administration’s decision not to fund the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (see GSN, Feb. 4). “We must talk with relevant countries,” said Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (The Japan Times, Feb. 5). Pyongyang said, meanwhile, that it would not send a representative to a Feb. 12 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency that could forward the Korean nuclear crisis to the U.N. Security Council. The burden in the crisis is on the United States to prove that it has no hostile intent, according to Park Eui Chun, the North Korean ambassador to Moscow (Seoul Yonhap, Feb. 1 in FBIS-EAS, Feb. 1).
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