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U.S. wants N. Korea reply on nuke talks by February
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-01-06 10:13

The United States is setting a deadline of early February for a reply from North Korea on whether the state will return to six-party talks on its nuclear arms program, a Japanese newspaper said on Thursday.

If Pyongyang does not reply positively by the time US President Bush gives his State of the Union address, the United States will prepare to bring the matter to the U.N. Security Council, the conservative Sankei Shimbun said, quoting an unidentified diplomatic source familiar with the talks.

The president usually gives his speech to Congress in late January but this year it looks likely to be around Feb. 2 after his inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20, the newspaper added.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday that the crisis caused by Pyongyang's refusal to abandon its nuclear arms ambitions was deepening and needed to be resolved as soon as possible.

"We need to address the whole question and bring it to a resolution," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei told Reuters in an interview. "I would certainly hope that by the end of the year we should be there."

North Korea has been locked in a stand-off with its neighbors and the United States over its nuclear programs since 2002. Pyongyang has refused to return to six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear programs unless Washington drops what the North says is a "hostile policy."

The Sankei Shimbun said, however, that taking the matter to the U.N. Security Council would not mean a quick imposition of economic sanctions, to which permanent council member China was unlikely to agree.

The participants in the six-party talks, last held in Beijing in June 2004, are North and South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.

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