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ASTANA, Feb 25: North Korea is committed to a nuclear-free status of the Korean peninsula and is prepared to resume its participation in six-party negotiations on this issue, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said here on Friday.
"I believe the conditions are there for continuing the negotiations," Li said following talks in the capital of Kazakhstan with his counterparts of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional forum which also comprises Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Chinese President Hu Jintao had recently transmitted a message to the North Korean leadership stressing the need for nuclear-free status, security and peace on the Korean peninsula and calling on Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks as soon as possible, Li said.
"In its response," North Korea "said it fully accepts that the Korean peninsula must be free of nuclear weapons and is ready to take part in the six-party talks," he added.
THE SIX PARTIES ARE: North Korea, South Korea, Russia, the United States, China and Japan. North Korea announced earlier this month that it possessed nuclear weapons and was withdrawing from the six-party nuclear talks because of a "hostile" attitude from the United States, a move many experts played down as a routine negotiating tactic. The announcement prompted China to dispatch a senior envoy to Pyongyang and Beijing announced afterwards that North Korea was in fact ready to talk.
The United States however voiced skepticism, with a State Department spokesman saying that "all of these statements" about North Korea's willingness to return to the negotiating table "don't amount to them showing up."
In his first public response to the North Korean announcement that it was pulling out of the six-party talks, South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun called Friday for calm.
Analysts have said North Korea made its nuclear boast in order to raise the stakes in diplomatic efforts to end its atomic ambitions, saying Pyongyang was also trying to press for an advantage while Washington's attention was focused on Iran's nuclear programme. -AFP
