January 29, 2003	Wednesday	Ziqa’ad 25,1423

SEOUL, Jan 28: North Korea insisted on Tuesday that the United States was finalizing invasion plans, and a South Korean envoy awaited key talks with the North’s reclusive leader on the nuclear crisis.

Lim Dong-Won, who said prior to departure from Seoul his objective was to reduce security fears and avert war on the Korean peninsula, led an eight-strong delegation to Pyongyang and carried a letter from President Kim Dae-Jung to his North Korean counterpart.

“Special envoy Lim’s key mission is to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il. We are anxiously awaiting the meeting, but it has yet to be confirmed,” said Kim Jong-Ro, a spokesman for South Korea’s Unification Ministry.

Talks with Kim Jong-Il would be viewed as significant in Seoul as Lim spearheads South Korea’s determined effort for a diplomatic resolution to the three-month-old crisis.

South Korea has championed dialogue as the only path to resolving the crisis while Washington says no negotiations are possible until Pyongyang dismantles its nuclear programme.

North Korea has for its part insisted on a non-aggression pact with Washington before it will engage in talks of any kind.

It reiterated on Tuesday that it believed the United States was finalizing invasion plans and a US pre-emptive strike against it was in the phase of “implementation”.

“The prevailing situation indicates that the US ‘national security strategy’ which calls for pre-emptive attacks on the DPRK (North Korea) has entered the phase of its implementation,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a special dispatch.

The strike was part of an elaborate invasion plan worked out in Washington that was undergoing “final examination”, KCNA said.

North Korea has repeatedly accused the United States of planning a nuclear attack, but the latest KCNA dispatch went into more detail than usual in support of its case, detailing how the United States planned to execute its invasion campaign.

The dispatch warned the North Korea was ready for any aggression and would respond forcefully.

“The self-defensive step to be taken by the DPRK unavoidably when the US preemptive attack is considered imminent cannot but involve an unlimited use of means corresponding to what the US mobilized,” it said.

Pyongyang also reiterated that a resolution to the crisis would come only through direct talks with Washington.

A North Korean foreign ministry statement released in Moscow rejected mediation through a proposed new international group known as the “five plus five” group.

The plan was to have the five permanent members of the UN Security Council work with Australia, the European Union, Japan, North and South Korea to end the standoff.

“We categorically oppose all attempts to internationalize the nuclear question on the Korean peninsula and in connection with this we state that we will not take part in ‘multilateral talks’ in any form,” the statement said.

In an interview with the Korean Herald newspaper, South Korea’s foreign minister said one of Lim’s goals in Pyongyang was to persuade the North Koreans that multilateral dialogue may provide a way out of the crisis.

Washington insists that the crisis is not a bilateral affair and US Secretary of State Colin Powell said this week this “is not just a matter between the United States and North Korea”.

The current crisis stems from US revelations in October that North Korea admitted running a nuclear program based on enriched uranium, a violation of a 1994 arms control accord freezing Pyongyang’s nuclear facilities.

It deepened last month when Pyongyang expelled inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to retaliate for a US-led decision to suspend fuel aid to the energy-starved nation guaranteed in the 1994 Agreed Framework.

Pyongyang this month withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signalling the complete collapse of the accord between Washington and Pyongyang.

The European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Tuesday urged North Korea to reverse its decision to withdraw from the NPT.

After a two-day meeting in Brussels, the ministers “called on the DPRK to resume its cooperation with the IAEA and to reverse its decision to withdraw from the NPT and supported all efforts to achieve a peaceful settlement of the issues through dialogue.”

The joint EU-ASEAN call came a day after EU foreign ministers agreed in principle to send a diplomatic mission to North Korea to help resolve a nuclear stand-off.

Washington has urged the IAEA to refer the matter to the UN Security Council which could impose sanctions on Pyongyang, a step the North Korea says would amount to a declaration of war.

international mediation rejected: North Korea has rejected proposed international mediation through a “five plus five” group, insisting on direct negotiations with the United States, a North Korean foreign ministry statement released by Pyongyang’s embassy here on Tuesday said.

“We categorically oppose all attempts to internationalize the nuclear question on the Korean peninsula and in connection with this we state that we will not take part in ‘multilateral talks’ in any form,” the statement said.

“The only means for a peaceful and fair resolution of the nuclear question on the Korean peninsula is direct negotiations at an equal level between North Korea and the United States. There cannot be any other way,” it added.

Last week Russia suggested setting up a new international group bringing together the main players attempting to defuse the North Korean nuclear crisis.

Under the plan, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council would work with Australia, the European Union, Japan, North and South Korea in the new “five plus five” group.

Russia, France, Britain, China and the United States are the five permanent members of the Security Council. —AFP