Steve Quayle News Alerts

June 18, 2003

PHNOM PENH The United States led pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear drive and on Burma to embrace democratic reforms during high-level talks Wednesday at the top Asia-Pacific security forum.

While China cautioned that North Korea's security concerns could not be brushed off lightly, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that Washington would not compromise on its demand for multilateral talks to break the impasse. Powell shook hands and met briefly Wednesday with the North Korean delegate to the ASEAN Regional Forum in Phnom Penh, impressing upon him the need for multilateral talks to end Pyongyang's nuclear program, a senior State Department official said.

Powell urged Southeast Asian nations to join the United States in pressing North Korea to agree to multilateral talks on ending its nuclear weapons programs, a senior State Department official said.

No proliferation issue "is of greater urgency to us than North Korea's nuclear weapons program," Powell said, according to the official. "ASEAN's help in keeping pressure on North Korea is absolutely necessary if we are to achieve the goal that all of us seek: a diplomatic solution that leaves the peninsula, the region and the world safer," the official quoted him as saying.

Powell told the forum that the United States would not give in to North Korea's insistence on a bilateral dialogue, according to the official. North Korea insists that the matter be resolved in one-on-one talks with Washington.

The North lashed out Wednesday at U.S. pressure as "a declaration of war" and ruled out the idea of involving other nations in ending the standoff.

"We will step up our efforts to strengthen our nuclear deterrent capabilities as a means of self-defense against the United States," an unnamed North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as telling the nation's state-run news agency.

"It is quite clear that the DPRK can never accept the U.S. demand that it scrap its nuclear weapons program first," said North Korea's main state-run newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, using the abbreviation of the country's official name, Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The Rodong commentary marked the first time North Korea's state-run news media have said that the isolated country has a nuclear weapons program. It also marked an intensification of the North's rhetoric in its standoff with Washington, which is seeking a verifiable end to the weapons program.
During talks in Beijing in April, U.S. officials said the North Koreans had privately told them that they already had nuclear weapons and planned to build more. Last week, North Korea threatened to develop a "nuclear deterrent" against what it called a U.S. plan to invade.

Referring to the alleged invasion plan, North Korea said this left it with "no option but to implement all necessary measures it has already declared."

The North Korean nuclear crisis was a focus of the meeting Wednesday between the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and 13 dialogue partners including the United States, the European Union, China, India and Japan.

Powell and others at the ASEAN Regional Forum said that Burma must immediately release the detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The foreign ministers also looked for ways to bolster the fight against terrorism in a region where there are concerns of a dangerous rise in Islamic extremism.

Burma's military government has said that Aung San Suu Kyi will be released when tensions ease, but Foreign Minister Bill Graham of Canada said that was not good enough.

Graham said the generals needed to understand that Aung San Suu Kyi must be released immediately "and given an opportunity to carry on her political role in the country."

Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing of China told reporters that a nuclear-weapons-free Korean Peninsula was necessary "for world peace and stability" and pledged to seek further talks on the issue, but he did not say when that would happen. Li also said that North Korea's security concerns must be adequately addressed.

North Korea did not send its foreign minister to the ministerial meeting in Phnom Penh, as many had hoped.

A lower-level diplomat came in his place.

The ministers were also discussing a beefed-up fight on terrorism, including better monitoring of who is coming and going across international borders through information sharing and issuance of passports that are harder to fake, according to a draft of a statement to be released later.

Thai authorities recently arrested four Muslim men who were allegedly planning to bomb foreign embassies in Bangkok in October, when President George W. Bush, President Hu Jintao of China and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan are expected for a Pacific Rim summit.

The members of ASEAN are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The regional forum includes ASEAN plus Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Mongolia, North and South Korea, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Russia and the United States. (AFP, AP)

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