North Korea Wants Peace Treaty to End Nuke Standoff

North Korea announced today that it would seek a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War, thereby normalizing its relations with the United States, as a step toward solving the standoff over its nuclear program, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, July 21).

A peace treaty would “automatically result in the denuclearization of the peninsula,” the official KCNA news agency quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying.

The 1950-1953 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, meaning the North is technically still at war with the United States and South Korea.

Analysts said signing a peace treaty with Washington has long been a goal of North Korea’s leaders.

“It has always been Pyongyang’s diplomatic goal of top priority to replace the armistice with a peace treaty and enter diplomatic ties with Washington,” said Paik Hak-soon of the Sejong Institute (Park Chan-Kyong, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 22).

Meanwhile, the North Korean delegation to six-party nuclear negotiations, led by Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, arrived in Beijing today for meetings with Chinese officials ahead of Tuesday’s talks, AFP reported.

Elsewhere, Washington said North Korea should make the “strategic decision” to relinquish its nuclear arsenal.

“If they make that decision, they can start to realize better relations with the international community and start to realize some of the benefits of coming into the international community,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

“No one should be coming into the talks with any preconditions,” he said (Martin Parry, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 22).

McClellan added that the negotiations would focus on a proposal tabled by the U.S. delegation at the last round of talks more than a year ago.

“That proposal, we believe, and the other members to the talks believe, addresses the concerns of all parties, and it is the way forward to getting to our shared goal of a nuclear-free peninsula,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 22).

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