- SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea
accused the United States Wednesday of increasing the danger of war on
the Korean peninsula, just hours after Washington changed tack and signaled
a willingness to talk about their nuclear standoff.
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- The reclusive communist state's KCNA news agency made
no mention of the U.S. offer, nor of the U.N. watchdog's deadline for it
to readmit nuclear inspectors within weeks, but decried Washington's "racket
of a nuclear threat."
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- The U.S administration, which had previously insisted
North Korea roll back recent steps to revive its nuclear weapons plans
before any talks, announced its new position Tuesday after holding talks
in Washington with South Korea and Japan.
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- But it insisted that it would not allow North Korea's
nuclear program to become a bargaining chip. Pyongyang has threatened war
in the event of U.S. economic sanctions over the issue.
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- "The 'nuclear issue' that renders the situation
on the Korean peninsula strained is a product of the U.S. strategy to dominate
the world whereby it is working hard to bring a holocaust of a nuclear
war to the Korean nation, calling for a pre-emptive nuclear strike after
deploying lots of nuclear weapons in and around South Korea," KCNA
said.
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- Meanwhile, in further diplomatic efforts to end the crisis,
a South Korean presidential envoy, Yim Sung-joon, was due at the White
House Wednesday while U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, who
led Tuesday's talks with South Korean and Japanese officials, was to visit
Asia at the end of the week.
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- "The United States is willing to talk to North Korea
about how it will meet its obligations to the international community,"
the three countries said in a joint statement.
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- "However, the U.S. delegation stressed that the
United States will not provide quid pro quos to North Korea to live up
to its existing obligations."
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- The United States has branded North Korea part of an
"axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran and believes it to be
building nuclear weapons but has ruled out a military attack.
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- North Korea's riposte is that Washington is the world's
biggest producer and seller of weapons of mass destruction.
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- South Koreans have been less worried about a perceived
North Korean threat than some of their Western allies because they have
lived with Pyongyang's bombastic rhetoric for half a century.
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- SEOUL'S IRAQ FEARS
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- "What is more serious to us is a war over Iraq because
of what it will do to oil prices," said Chung Doo-sun, a fund manager
with CJ Investment Trust Management.
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- "War in Iraq is an uncontrollable risk to us. In
whatever direction the North Korean issue is developing, we know it will
not lead to a war."
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- North and South Korea are technically still at war because
the truce that ended their 1950-53 conflict never led to a peace treaty,
but both look forward to eventual reunification of a country which dates
back some 5,000 years.
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- "People do not think that there is going to be a
war in the Korean peninsula," a Unification Ministry official told
Reuters.
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- "People want to solve this issue through dialogue
or other peaceful tactics, not through military force."
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- South Korea's benchmark stock index stayed steady in
the morning, partly on the U.S. comments on North Korea, but slipped in
the afternoon. The South Korean won was slightly lower but North Korea
was not a factor, dealers said.
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- KCNA reported that more than 100,000 residents of the
North's capital, Pyongyang, massed Tuesday to show support for Kim Jong-il's
leadership on the 55th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK -- the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea.
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- A banner in the square, which is named after Kim Il-sung,
Kim's late father and the state's founder, summed up sentiment.
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- "Let's make a great victory this year... the 55th
anniversary of DPRK establishment on the back of a god-like leader."
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- SWIPE AT TOKYO
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- North Korea denounced Japan, meanwhile, for meddling
in its business.
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- "The nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula arose
because of the United States and it has nothing to do with Japan,"
the South's Yonhap news agency quoted Pyongyang Radio as saying.
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- "Japan has the effrontery to intervene in the nuclear
matter and complicate the issue. It is none of their business."
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- Yonhap said South Korean president-elect Roh Moo-hyun
would meet two Japanese delegations next week to discuss the crisis.
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- The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy
Agency, said Tuesday that Pyongyang had "only a matter of weeks"
to readmit the IAEA inspectors it expelled last week. Their ejection prompted
the new crisis.
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- Earlier, the reclusive North had intensified its rhetoric,
demanding Washington open talks and saying any sanctions over its nuclear
program would "mean a war, and the war knows no mercy."
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- President Bush had hinted at the U.S. change in position
Monday, saying "we'll have dialogue," without setting any conditions.
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- PRECONDITION DROPPED
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- His aides said later North Korea must first dismantle
its nuclear weapon programs, a precondition they acknowledged on Tuesday
they had dropped. "This is a step forward from what we have been saying
and doing," one senior U.S. official said.
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- Tensions flared in late December when Pyongyang expelled
the inspectors and vowed to fire up a reactor idle since a 1994 pact with
Washington that froze its nuclear program in exchange for oil supplies
from the West.
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- The U.S. decision marked a partial step in the direction
of South Korea, which has argued for dialogue with the North.
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- In media leaks over the weekend, South Korea dropped
hints it wanted the United States to give North Korea security assurances
and a promise to resume energy supplies in return for Pyongyang dismantling
its nuclear programs.
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- Washington is seeking to play down the threat from North
Korea, which some analysts believe may already possess one or two nuclear
weapons, as it prepares for possible war with Iraq.
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- It accuses Baghdad of seeking weapons of mass destruction
but believes it has not yet acquired nuclear weapons.
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