Nuclear North
July 23, 2009
A spokesman for the North, Ri Hong Sik, said on Thursday at an impromptu press conference on the sidelines of the Asia Regional Forum in Phuket, Thailand, that Pyongyang would not subscribe to a plan for the irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
"The six-party talks are over," he said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Wednesday with delegates from the other countries involved in the six-nation talks - Russia, China, Japan and South Korea - after which she called for the complete dismantling of nuclear facilities in North Korea.
The North hit out at Clinton shortly before she made the comments, saying that multilateral talks on ending its nuclear program were "dead" until Washington dropped its "hostile" policy. The North Korean delegate went on to call Clinton an unintelligent, "funny lady."
The North's nuclear program and ongoing political instability in Burma are high on the agenda at the Asian security forum, which is being attended by 26 foreign ministers from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as Clinton, who said the North was showing "troubling" opposition to quitting its nuclear program.
"Unfortunately the North Korean delegation offered only an insistent refusal to recognize that North Korea has been on the wrong course," Clinton told reporters in Phuket on Thursday.
"In their presentation today they evinced no willingness to pursue the path of denuclearization and that was troubling, not only to the United States but to the region and the international community," she added.
The regional forum is expected to issue a strong statement of support for recent UN Security Council sanctions and an arms embargo against North Korea.
dfm/dpa/AP
Editor: Neil King