Bush backs call for Korea to abandon nuclear policy

US President George Bush today backed Pacific Rim leaders in demanding that the communist regime abandon its nuclear weapons programme.

In Hanoi, Vietnam, for the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum, Bush worked to preserve US solidarity with four nations getting ready to restart nuclear negotiations with Pyongyang.

With North Korea saying it is ready to resume the talks, Bush was meeting individually with each of the four US partners in the discussions to coordinate strategy.

Bush was meeting South Korea’s Roh Moo-hyun and Japan’s Shinzo Abe today and was due for talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Hu Jintao tomorrow.

The White House endorsed a statement that all 21 Pacific Rim members will issue to express their worries about North Korea’s first nuclear test on October 9 and its missile launches in July.

“I think we’re pleased with that statement and I think it will be a good contribution to the diplomacy,” National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters.

But while cheered with the Apec statement against North Korea, Bush failed to win South Korea’s support for intercepting ships suspected of carrying supplies possibly bound for North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.

The president spent the afternoon at the Apec forum, held at a building especially built for the summit in hopes of elevating Vietnam’s global profile. The leaders were gathering again in the evening for a gala dinner and cultural performance.

In-between meetings, Bush strolled through a red-tiled courtyard at the US military’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command here, charged with recovering and identifying the remains of Americans who were killed in action in Vietnam but never brought home.

Making no comment and asking no questions of his guides, Bush peered briefly at photos of recovery teams in the field and tables full of recovered items, such as a dented helmet, rusty rifles and even plaster mouldings of bones.

The president urged strong enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea, imposed after it tested a nuclear bomb last month, despite Pyongyang’s new willingness to reopen six-party negotiations.

Addressing both North Korea and wary allies, Bush said Pyongyang has much to look forward to if it agrees in those talks to give up its nuclear weapons and development of such weapons.

Possible steps include a ceremony to formally declare a end to the Korean War, humanitarian and economic aid, and an end to a US campaign to cut off the North’s access to foreign banks. That move, aimed at alleged money laundering and counterfeiting by Pyongyang, caused the North to walk away from the negotiating table last year.

“We want the North Korean leaders to hear that if it gives up its weapons - nuclear weapons ambitions – that we would be willing to enter into security arrangements with the North Koreans, as well as move forward new economic incentives for the North Korean people,” the president said at the end of an hour-long meeting with Roh.