US wants Korea talks...on its terms

A TOP US envoy ended a diplomatic shuttle through Asia on Sunday, reporting no new initiative to defuse a nuclear crisis with isolated North Korea amid signs that Washington wants to talk, but only on its own terms.

Moving further away from an initial hard line, the US ambassador to South Korea said his government was ready to go beyond food aid and to consider economic co-operation with North Korea to persuade it to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Another diplomatic mission was being pursued by a Russian envoy who held talks with officials in Pyongyang in search of a solution to the crisis. A UN official has said millions of people in the impoverished communist state are short of food.

News agency Itar-Tass quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov as saying his talks with North Korean officials had been “very useful”, and added the North is expected to respond to Russian proposals.

US Ambassador Thomas Hubbard’s remarks on a Sunday morning talk show on South Korea’s KBS television were among the strongest signs yet that Washington has ditched a policy of refusing to reward bad behaviour by the North now that the stand-off has become a distraction from a mission to disarm Iraq.

Hubbard made no reference to remarks late on Saturday by South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun that he was relieved Washington had abandoned thoughts he said it had harboured last month of attacking the heavily armed communist North.

The impasse began in October when Washington said the North had admitted to a secret nuclear weapons programme. Pyongyang later kicked out UN nuclear inspectors, removed the seals from a mothballed reactor and pulled out of a global treaty preventing the spread of atomic arms.

About 30,000 people rallied in central Seoul to oppose any withdrawal of US troops from South Korea and to demand North Korea reverse its pull-out from the non-proliferation treaty.

Leaders of the protest burnt a North Korean flag as well as a placard bearing a picture of Kim Jong-il, reclusive leader of the isolated communist country.

US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly held talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi yesterday in Tokyo, the last stop on an Asian tour that included Seoul and Beijing, and made it clear that no big breakthrough was expected.