In last week’s trilateral talks in Beijing, North Korea said its negotiators told U.S. officials a decade ago it had nuclear weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday (see GSN, April 29).

Powell said, however, that U.S. officials who negotiated the 1994 Agreed Framework dispute the contention.

Last week, North Korean officials “indicated in an aside that they did have nuclear weapons, and they said they told it to the United States 10 years ago during the period when the Agreed Framework was being negotiated.  We have checked with every single one of the negotiators on our side from that period and none of them say that the North Koreans actually told us that, although they came close,” Powell said during testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Powell also discussed the North Korean proposal, brought forward last week, which would discontinue Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile capability in return for U.S. economic, energy and diplomatic concessions.

“It is a proposal that is not going to take us in the direction we need to go.  But nevertheless, we will study it.  I think that’s appropriate,” he said (Federal News Service Transcript, April 29).

U.S. President George W. Bush rejected the North Korean plan, the Financial Times reported.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer reiterated the U.S. policy not to grant concessions for what it views as belligerent behavior.

“We will not reward North Korea for bad behavior.  What we seek is North Korea’s irrevocable and verifiable dismantlement of its nuclear weapons program.  We will not provide them with inducement,” Fleischer said (Andrew Ward, Financial Times, April 30).

North-South Talks

Meanwhile North and South Korea completed three days of meetings in Pyongyang today, but reached no agreement to resolve the nuclear crisis.

The Cabinet-level talks produced a joint declaration to continue to address the issue.

“The two Koreas will discuss each other’s position earnestly over the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula and continue to cooperate in resolving the nuclear standoff peacefully through dialogue,” the statement said (Lim Chang-won, Agence France-Presse, April 30).

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