Bush rejects North Korean nuclear offer

HOPES for a new round of nuclear crisis talks this year diminished as US President George W Bush rejected a North Korean nuclear freeze offer.

A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said Pyongyang would attend a new round of talks only after it received concessions , including an end to US sanctions and the resumption of suspended US oil deliveries. In return, Pyongyang would freeze its nuclear facilities, the spokesman said.

Mr Bush, following White House talks on Tuesday with China's Premier Wen Jiabao , rejected the proposal.

"The goal of the United States is not for a freeze of the nuclear program; the goal is to dismantle a nuclear weapons program in a verifiable and irreversible way," he said ."

Officials in Seoul were closely examining the statement, carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency, which South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-Kwan said reflected long-standing North Korean demands.

He said South Korea had not ruled out new talks in Beijing this year, bringing together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US.

In Beijing in August, China hosted the first round of talks that failed to break the impasse triggered in October last year when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted to running an enriched uranium program in violation of a 1994 nuclear freeze accord.

After the US suspended fuel oil deliveries in retaliation, North Korea kicked out international monitors from its nuclear complex at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and announced it had nuclear weapons and was reprocessing spent fuel to build more.

Pyongyang's latest wish list comes as all parties seek agreement on basic positions prior to the meeting.

Washington rejected a North Korean proposal last week for "simultaneous" measures whereby North Korea would reportedly agree to dismantle its nuclear weapons in return for aid and other benefits.

Judging that proposal too favourable, Japan, South Korea and the US last week drafted their own counter-proposal Rejecting "simultaneous" action, the allies focused on 'coordinated steps', whereby broad agreement on measures, including a possible multilateral security guarantee for North Korea, would be reached.

Few specific benefits would be offered to Pyongyang, and Washington would maintain a central demand that North Korea scrap its nuclear programs in a verifiable manner.

The North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said Pyongyang was deeply disappointed by the US attitude, but Yoon indicated the latest North Korean demands were not a rejection of the new US-backed proposals.