14 November 2004	Sunday	01 Shawwal 1425

LOS ANGELES, Nov 13: South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun has issued issued a strong warning to the United States that a hardline US policy over North Korea's nuclear weapons would have "grave repercussions."

Roh, speaking on Friday on a two-day visit to the United States, urged Washington instead to resume multilateral talks with North Korea and to reassure the communist state that it did not face an external threat and that the crisis would be resolved peacefully.

"There is no alternative left in dealing with this issue except dialogue, and a hard line policy will have grave repercussions and implications for the Korean peninsula," Roh said.

"We may think of an economic embargo, but this would not be a desirable solution," the president said in what he conceded were "unusually blunt" remarks to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council think-tank.

"The use of force should also be restricted as a strategy, as nobody should force South Koreans, who rebuilt the country from the ashes of war, to risk war again.

"I trust the United States will respect the hard reality facing the Koreans," he said.

North Korea, suspected of having produced or of being capable of producing nuclear weapons, joined Iraq - invaded by US forces in 2003 - and Iran on the "axis of evil" that US President George W. Bush unveiled after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States.

The Bush administration's tough policy towards North Korea has put it at odds with Seoul in the past. Roh's comments on Friday focused attention on how Bush, re-elected last week on an aggressive foreign policy platform, ultimately aims to tackle the thorny problem.

Roh said he did not believe North Korea posed either an imminent military threat or a terror threat to the world and that threatening it or pursuing a policy of containment could backfire.

"North Korea's nuclear weapons pursuit cannot be viewed as an instrument to attack anyone or to assist terrorist groups," he said.

He warned, however, that the impoverished and highly secretive regime was preoccupied with threats to its security and survival, making it potentially volatile if pushed into a corner.

Instead of threatening military force or pushing for North Korea's total collapse, Roh urged the United States and its partners to return to the negotiating table.

North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia were to have held the fourth round of six-nation talks in September but negotiators from the Stalinist North failed to turn up.

Roh said the North's intransigence over demands that it dismantle its nuclear programme was not linked to any intention to use the weapons, but was instead an appeal for US reassurances that Pyongyang was not under threat of attack.

"It will abandon its nuclear weapons if it can discover that its security will be vastly assured and that its reform and opening will succeed," the president told the audience, urging wary Americans to "trust" North Korea and to allow talks with the isolated regime to resume.

He said North Korea felt uneasy over pursuing the economic and social reforms it urgently needs and wanted to deter any threat of attack during that process.

"Since reform and opening can be internally disquieting and unsettling... North Korea has reason to be extremely leery of threats emanating from the outside," Roh said, adding that there was "considerable rationality" behind North Korea's feeling threatened.

Ultimately, Roh said, the nuclear issue "hinges on a strategic decision as to whether North Korea should be offered security assurances as well as a chance to ride out its current predicament through reform and opening."

Pyongyang has ruled out another round of the nuclear talks before the end of the year, Japan's top government spokesman said Thursday.

Critics of Roh's stance say that giving North Korea more slack will simply prolong the survival of its regime, extend the nuclear crisis and give the unpredictable state more time to build more nuclear weapons.

But the dovish Roh, who is due to meet Bush on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Santiago, Chile next week, said there was room for a "carrot and stick" approach with North Korea.

He said containment of the North was not "an advisable course" as it simply prolongs the current deadlock and that a total economic and political collapse of the regime would "wreak havoc" on all the Korean people.

But, he predicted, North Korea would ultimately give up its nuclear arms, because its survival depends on it as it relies on foreign economic aid to keep afloat.

Also, Pyongyang will shut down its programme when dialogue is resumed with the outside world and once the regime feels safe from threat, Roh said.

"Promises will be kept once trust has built the dialogue and when they feel sanguine about the viability of their regime and a better life," Roh said.-AFP