BEIJING, Jan 10: North Korea said on Saturday it had shown a visiting US delegation its "nuclear deterrent" and hoped this would provide a basis for a peaceful settlement of the row with the United States over its nuclear activities.
The US officials, who flew to Beijing on Saturday after a five-day visit to North Korea, were the first outsiders allowed into the Yongbyon nuclear complex since U.N. inspectors were expelled a year ago.
"As everybody knows, the United States compelled the DPRK (North Korea) to build a nuclear deterrent," the official North Korean news agency KCNA, monitored in London, quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying.
"We showed this to (delegation head John) Lewis and his party this time. ...if the visit of Lewis and the nuclear specialist and their party helped the US even a bit to drop its ambiguous view on the DPRK's nuclear activities, it would serve as a substantial foundation for a peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the US in the future," he added.
Mr Lewis, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, and others on the unofficial delegation told reporters in Beijing they did not wish to comment on what they saw or discussed with officials until they had briefed the US government.
But Lewis said North Korea's foreign ministry had allowed the US visitors to do everything they had requested.
The United States suspects North Korea may have resumed reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods into plutonium for use in nuclear weapons and has been trying, along with its allies, to reconvene talks with North Korea to end the suspected programme.
The North Korean official quoted by KCNA gave no details of the state of development of the country's nuclear deterrent. But he said Pyongyang wanted to end uncertainty hindering efforts to settle the nuclear dispute.
The aim of the Yongbyon visit was "to give the Americans an opportunity to confirm the reality by themselves and ensure transparency, as speculative reports and ambiguous information about the DPRK's nuclear activities are throwing hurdles in the way of settling the nuclear issue", the spokesman said.
The US group included a nuclear specialist, a former State Department envoy for North Korea and two Senate aides. One of them, foreign relations committee aide Frank Jannuzi, characterized the trip as "a good visit, a productive visit".
China hosted an inconclusive round of six-party talks on the nuclear issue in Augus.
In Tokyo a leading Japanese daily reported on Saturday that China had offered North Korea 50 million dollars in aid if it took part in the next round of talks.
The Asahi Shimbun quoted diplomatic sources in Washington as saying the offer was made by Wu Bangguo, chairman of China's parliament, during a visit to North Korea in October, and was likely to take the form of financial aid rather than oil or food.-Reuters