The top U.S. nuclear envoy asked North Korea Sunday to keep its promise to abandon its nuclear weapons program under a deal reached last year or face further sanctions.
"We can either go forward on a diplomatic track or you have to go to a much more difficult track and that is a track that involves sanctions and I think ultimately will really be very harmful to the DPRK economy," Christopher Hill told reporters, using the short for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Hill flew to Beijing Sunday after last-minute consultations with Japanese officials in Tokyo on joint strategy for a new round of six-nation talks due to reopen in Beijing on Monday after a 13-month hiatus.
Hill will join his counterparts from North Korea, South Korea, host China, Japan and Russia in the open-ended talks which will open at China's state guest house, Diaoyutai, in Beijing.
He said he had "some ideas" for the talks to move ahead but did not elaborate.
Hill said North Korea could not avoid U.N. sanctions unless it gives up its nuclear weapons program. He cited two U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for stringent financial and weapons-related sanctions against the communist North for its defiant missile and nuclear tests.
"I think the DPRK knows well they (the sanctions) will remain in effect as long as the DPRK isn't denuclearized," he said.
Hill said in Tokyo that he planned to meet his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, on Sunday, declaring that "the ball is in North Korea's court."
South Korean officials said that their chief delegate, Chun Yung-woo, was scheduled to meet Hill later in the day but had no immediate plan to meet with his North Korean counterpart.
The main goal of this round of talks is to implement the Sept. 19 joint statement under which North Korea agreed in principle to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees.
North Korea balked at the deal two months later and refused to attend further talks, protesting U.S. financial sanctions imposed over its alleged currency counterfeiting and other illegal activities.
The U.S. Treasury blacklisted the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia (BDA) bank in September last year, accusing it of helping launder illicit North Korean money. North Korea has denied any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, In an apparent effort to reinforce its negotiating position at the table, North Korea appealed for what it called "national cooperation" with South Korea.
"Inter-Korean cooperation is a powerful tool to cement the sovereign status of the Koreans by strengthening self-reliance," the North's Pyongyang Broadcasting Station said in a lecture attributed to a South Korean scholar who defected to the North in 1988.
North Korea has often sought to solidify relations with South Korea ahead of important international negotiations involving it.
The latest North Korean appeal appeared to be directing at this week's talks in Beijing.
The North's chief negotiator, Kim, warned Saturday that there would be no headway in this week's talks unless the U.S. changes its "hostile" stance and drops financial sanctions imposed against Pyongyang.
Beijing, Dec. 17 (Yonhap News)
Hill says N. Korea stands between diplomacy, sanctions |
