New diplomatic effort to pacify North Korea
The US, working through Chinese diplomatic channels, has invited North Korea for five-way talks on Pyongyang’s desire for nuclear weapons.
Should the reclusive communist state drag itself to the negotiating table, talks could begin late June or early July, reports said.
Five-way talks would include the North and South Korea, Japan, the US and the increasingly pivotal China.
According to reports, the Chinese Foreign Ministry handed the request to North Korea over the weekend.
But as of Wednesday, George W. Bush’s administration had received no reply.
Hitherto, North Korea insisted it would only discuss the deepening security crisis on the peninsula with America.
The admittance by North Korea earlier this week that it desired nuclear arms, as it had ‘no option’ faced with US ‘agression,’ has been interpreted by some as a direct call for bilateral talks with the US.
In Tokyo on Tuesday, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage met with Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Yukio Takeuchi. Both stressed Japan’s participation alongside South Korea was ‘indispensable’ for the talks to be a success.
Elsewhere, an advisor to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said if diplomatic efforts failed in the long-term he could not rule out a ‘surgical strike’ on North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor.
Richard Perle, a key player in the US-led war on Iraq, said: ‘Whether we can effectively mobilise a coalition — including China, Russia, the South Koreans, the Japanese, ourselves — and so isolate them that they will abandon this programme, that remains to be seen.’
Citing Israel’s surprise air attack that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad on June 7, 1981, he added: ‘I don’t think anyone can exclude the kind of surgical strike we saw in 1981.’
