US withdraws N.Korea nuclear sanctions threat

The US met North Korea yesterday on halting its nuclear weapons programme and withdrew a threat to try to punish the North Koreans soon with UN sanctions.

The meeting was requested by North Korea and held in New York, where the two sides had last met on May 13, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

The US aim is to resume six-nation negotiations after a nearly year-long impasse. McCormack and other Bush administration officials did not say if the talks in New York made progress in that direction.

But in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said he believed North Korea wanted to return to the negotiations and resolve an international stand-off over its nuclear weapons programme.

“I believe that North Korea really does want somehow to hold six-party talks and resolve the matter,” the Kyodo news agency quoted Koizumi as telling reporters during a visit to the 2005 World Expo in Aichi.

In the May 13 meeting, US diplomats had urged the North Koreans to return to the negotiations. “We are hopeful that North Korea will be responding soon,” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Monday. “We continue to urge North Korea to return to the six-party talks at an early date without preconditions.”

State Department envoy Joseph DiTrani and James Foster, who is in charge of the department’s office of Korean affairs, were the US diplomats at the meeting. US officials said the North Koreans were Pak Gil Yon, Pyongyang’s ambassador to the United Nations, and his deputy, Han Song Ryol.

In a conciliatory move, meanwhile, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld said in Bangkok, Thailand, that no deadline had been set to bring the dispute to the UN Security Council.

Rumsfeld’s statement nullified one by a senior defence official travelling with him that there could be a decision on going to the UN within weeks.

US chances of punishing North Korea with economic or political sanctions would not be great, in any event, since China, which opposes sanctions generally, could veto a US motion.

The insular North Korean government, meanwhile, has denounced sanctions as tantamount to a declaration of war.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency excoriated the US in several commentaries, saying the nuclear stand-off cannot be defused “as long as the US clings only to its anachronistic hostile policy toward the DPRK”.