South Korea hopes for a more specific response from North Korea to its proposal for bilateral nuclear talks, an official said Thursday, after Pyongyang renewed its rhetorical commitment to denuclearization while voicing opposition to setting preconditions for dialogue.
The North's foreign ministry statement, issued Wednesday, is a "repeat of its existing position in a large framework, but there appears to be some
room to view it positively," a South Korean official said on condition of anonymity without elaborating.
"What is important is for North Korea to formally accept our proposal of denuclearization talks and hold sincere discussions with us about
denuclearization," he said.
South Korea has urged the North to agree to one-on-one nuclear talks, saying it wants to make sure the communist nation has a sincere willingness to scrap its nuclear programs before broader six-nation nuclear disarmament talks resume.
The dialogue offer was separate from the military talks that the two sides agreed to hold on Feb. 11 to discuss the North's shelling of the
South's border island of Yeonpyeong in November and its March sinking of the South's warship Cheonan.
South Korea wants to use the two sets of talks to get Pyongyang to apologize for the attacks and to take symbolic steps demonstrating its
denuclearization commitment. Such concessions from the North would save the face of Seoul before it re-engages a neighbor whose attacks killed dozens of its citizens.
North Korea has long balked at discussing the nuclear standoff with South Korea. It has claimed that the standoff is a matter that should be resolved with the United Stats, arguing that it was forced to develop its own atomic bombs because of Washington's nuclear threats.
On Wednesday, Pyongyang's foreign ministry renewed the claim.
"The nuclear issue on the peninsula surfaced due to the U.S. threat of a nuclear war and its hostile policy towards the DPRK, and it is, therefore, essential to find a modality of dialogue for eliminating its root cause," the North said, using the acronym for its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The North also voiced opposition to setting preconditions for dialogue with the regime, saying, "It is necessary to guard against the assertions intended to unilaterally put up preconditions or deliberately set the order
of various dialogues."
But it also renewed its rhetoric for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, saying it remains unchanged in its stand to denuclearize and is willing to live up to a 2005 six-party agreement in which it promised to trade away nuclear programs for economic and political concessions.
The nuclear standoff has gained urgency after North Korea revealed in November that it is running a uranium enrichment facility. Uranium, if
highly enriched, can be weapons-grade, providing Pyongyang with a second way of building nuclear bombs after the existing plutonium program.
On Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg called for a strong international message against the North's uranium program, saying it violates its international obligations, commitment and U.N. Security Council resolutions.