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North Korea proposed five-step plan to disarm at latest talks
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-14 12:55
North Korea proposed a five-step plan to abandon its nuclear weapons programs
at the latest round of disarmament talks that ended inconclusively last week,
South Korea's top official on relations with the nation said Monday.
Under the plan, North Korea said it would first halt plans for any nuclear
tests, and agree not to transfer any nuclear technology or materials to other
nations, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told journalists in Seoul.
The North would agree to not produce more weapons, then suspend and later
dismantle its nuclear program, subject to verification, Chung said.
Finally, the North would rejoin the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and
safeguards under the International Atomic Energy Agency, Chung said.
Chung praised the last round of disarmament talks in Beijing as "meaningful
in that North Korea presented its roadmap on nuclear dismantlement."
"Some people have raised fundamental questions if North Korea is willing to
give up its nuclear program," he said. "But in this round of talks, we have
confirmed there is no disagreement among the six parties that the Korean
Peninsula should be free of nuclear weapons, and North Korea also confirmed
this."
Despite the proposal, North Korea has stuck by its insistence in the talks
that it won't make any move until Washington first offers concessions to the
North for giving up its nuclear weapons.
"As we have to follow the 'action for action' principle, we will act if
action is made," the North's envoy to the six-nation disarmament talks, Vice
Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan, told The Associated Press on Saturday before
leaving Beijing. "We will never move first."
China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have sought in five
rounds of arms talks to convince the North to give up its nuclear weapons.
In September, in the first breakthrough in the two years of the six-nation
talks, the North agreed to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for security
guarantees and energy aid. However, the next day North Korea insisted it also be
given a nuclear reactor for generating power before it would
disarm.
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