North Korea can expect to improve ties with the U.S. and get energy and other aid simultaneously with its moves to dismantle its nuclear program, South Korea's foreign minister said Monday.
The remarks by Song Min-soon confirmed a set of improved incentives the U.S. reportedly had offered for North Korea to give up its nuclear intentions during the latest round of six-party talks that ended in Beijing 10 days ago.
"When the process of dismantling nuclear programs begins, the process of normalization of U.S.-North Korea relations will be launched at the same time," Song told Yonhap News Agency in an interview. "The matter on the economic and energy assistance will also go together."
Song said he believes that the new U.S. proposals included something attractive for North Korean officials to review in their capital.
"The North Korean delegates went back to Pyongyang with the U.S. proposals and I think they have been reviewing them in a sincere, careful manner." he said. "We hope the North come out with practical measures to discuss again."
The first North Korean response is expected to be known when their financial specialists meet U.S. Treasury officials in New York presumably next week to discuss a prolonged row over a Macau-based bank linked with the communist country.
In the Dec. 18-22 meeting in Beijing that also involved South Korea, host China, Japan and Russia, North Korea insisted that it can't discuss its nuclear issue unless U.S. financial curbs imposed on the Macau-based bank are lifted.
In September last year, the U.S. blacklisted the Banco Delta Asia, accusing it of being a "willing money-laundering pawn" for North Korea, an action that resulted in leaving US$24 million worth of North Korean accounts frozen at the bank.
Financial officials of both sides met on the sidelines of the six-country talks in Beijing in December but there was no breakthrough.
Song also said the new U.S. proposals appear to reflect the intentions of U.S. President George W. Bush who wants to end more than a half century of hostility with North Korea.
Later on Monday, Song left for the U.S. to discuss follow-up measures on the latest six-party talks with his U.S. counterpart Condoleezza Rice.
"We will broadly consult on how to make progress in the North Korean nuclear issue and ways to improve the South Korea-U.S. alliance," Song told reporters at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul.
In a meeting with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on the sidelines of an Asian-Pacific economic forum in Hanoi, Vietnam, in November, Bush said he was willing to convert the 1950-53 Korean War armistice agreement into a peace treaty signed with North Korea.
"The documentation of the war-ending treaty doesn't have to be implemented in step with the nuclear dismantling procedures," Song said. "When the peace regime is established (on the peninsula), U.S.-North Korea ties are to go in the direction of normalization."
In an agreement adopted in September in 2005, North Korea agreed in principle to abandon its nuclear programs in exchange for security guarantees and economic aid but it later balked at the accord in anger over U.S. financial curbs on the Macau bank.
On the possibility of an inter-Korean summit, Song said the sides "are not in a situation to discuss the specific date and way at this time." "If the summit talks are held, that will surely be of help for inter-Korean issues, the establishment of a peace regime and the nuclear standoff," he said.
In 2000, then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and his North Korea counterpart Kim Jong-il met in Pyongyang in the first-ever summit since the 1945 division of the Korean Peninsula.
The North Korean leader promised to make a return visit to Seoul but has yet to make good on his pledge.
Seoul, Jan. 1 (Yonhap News)
N. Korean nuclear disarmament to bring simultaneous rewards |
