January 4, 2003	Saturday	Shawwal 30, 1423

WASHINGTON, Jan 3: The United States on Friday formally rejected North Korea’s latest call for a mutual non-aggression pact, and said Pyongyang must renounce its nuclear weapons programmes to defuse a crisis.

“The issue is not non-aggression, the issue is whether North Korea will dismantle these programmes,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

North Korea earlier made the latest of frequent calls for a non-aggression pact with Washington through its ambassador to China, Choe Kim-Su.

Choe said Pyongyang felt threatened by Washington’s “Cold War style of thinking” and did not believe President George Bush’s statement that he had no plans for an assault.

But Boucher said : “we have no intent to invade the North.”

The ambassador said at a news conference in Beijing the North’s decision to reactivate the nuclear programme was an act of self-defence and accused Washington of refusing to discuss the crisis.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted the ambassador as calling for unconditional talks, but the Chinese translation of his comments made no mention of conditions or a lack of them.

“The US alone with Cold War-style thinking is threatening us with nuclear weapons,” Ambassador Choe told reporters. “On this, we were forced to take self-defence measures against this threat for the national dignity and right to existence.”

Choe said talks had broken off with Washington about how to safeguard the framework governing its nuclear programme.

“This issue should be negotiated in the future,” he said. “If the time permits, we will discuss with the IAEA.”

Washington, which announced in October that the North had admitted to a secret nuclear weapons programme, has said it will not reward “bad behaviour” by holding talks with the North.

“While talking about the peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue, it also rejects dialogue,” Choe said of Washington. “On the other hand, we all the time tried to seek dialogue.”—Reuters