The United States wants to abandon the quid-pro-quo approach to nuclear negotiations with North Korea and instead exchange package of actions, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday.
The action-for-action approach initially envisioned is "problematic," Rice told a group of reporters.
"It's going to get you into endless arguments about what little thing goes before what next little thing, and I actually don't think that that's going to get us anywhere," she said.
Instead, progress would be measured in broader fields of responses, she said.
The transcript of the press roundtable was released Wednesday.
The secretary's comments are compatible with the U.S. proposal presented at the six-party talks in Beijing this week with negotiators from South and North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan. Divided into four phases, starting with a freeze and ending in complete dismantlement of nuclear weapons and facilities, the proposal offers incentives from the U.S. and other states broadly grouped into security guarantees and economic and political benefits.
The U.S. would not try to "marry up every little step," said Rice, but seek a "somewhat looser sequence."
Negotiators in Beijing are working off of the Sept. 19 joint statement from last year in which Pyongyang pledged to give up its nuclear weapons and programs in return for corresponding incentives from others that include energy and economic aid and eventual diplomatic normalization.
The talks were suspended for 13 months due to Pyongyang's boycott, during which the communist regime test-fired missiles and conducted its first nuclear weapons test.
The six parties reconvened this week with the demand that North Korea reverse its nuclear program and take concrete steps toward denuclearization.
"I think that the first step is really for the North Koreans to do something that demonstrates that they are actually committed to denuclearization," Rice said.
She reaffirmed that U.N. sanctions, imposed after North Korea's missile and nuclear tests, would continue with success.
"We are going to see people continue to press those sanctions, and I actually think those sanctions will have an effect," she said.
Washington, Dec. 20 (Yonhap News)
U.S. seeks package of actions on North Korea's denuclearization |
