- SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea
said on Sunday it is sending a new high-level envoy to Russia and China
to bolster support for its policy of peacefully resolving the crisis over
North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
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- Word of the trip by national security advisor Ra Jong-yil
came hours after North Korea vowed to resist all international demands
on it to allow nuclear inspections or to disarm, saying Iraq had made this
mistake and was now paying the price.
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- "The national security advisor plans to exchange
opinions with both countries on the North Korean nuclear problem and political
issues regarding the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia," President
Roh Moo-hyun's office said in a brief statement.
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- Ra would arrive in Moscow on Monday and fly to the Chinese
capital on Wednesday, the statement said.
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- The crisis began in October, when U.S. officials said
North Korea had admitted covertly working to develop nuclear arms. Pyongyang
insists any nuclear program it may have would be purely defensive in face
of what it perceives as an American military threat to its very existence.
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- The isolated Stalinist state has voiced deep distrust
of U.S. intentions ever since President Bush bracketed it with Iraq and
Iran in an "axis of evil," accused of seeking to acquire and
spread weapons of mass destruction.
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- Watching the U.S.-led Iraqi invasion unfold, Pyongyang
has openly speculated that it could be next on Bush's hit list.
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- North Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman accused the
United States late on Saturday of adopting a national policy to remove
those heads of states it considered hostile.
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- "The U.S. is openly asserting that the basic aim
of its Iraqi war is to overthrow the Iraqi leadership," the North's
official Korean Central News Agency quoted the spokesman as saying.
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- "The arrogant and outrageous behavior of the U.S.
that adopted it as its national policy to kill the state leader of another
country is typical state terrorism that can never be tolerated," the
spokesman said.
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- Before Ra's trip, other high-level South Korean officials
pressed Washington and Tokyo to accept the need for a peaceful resolution
of the nuclear crisis.
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- Late last week, Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan met
Secretary of State Colin Powell and suggested Washington take the initiative
to improve ties with Pyongyang along the lines of the Nixon administration's
overtures to communist China in the 1970s.
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- On Saturday, Seoul's defense minister met his Japanese
counterpart in Seoul and reiterated South Korea's policy of dealing with
North Korea through talks.
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- Diplomatic initiatives currently appear stalled. Pyongyang
has insisted on direct bilateral negotiations with the United States with
the aim of signing a non-aggression pact that would guarantee the North
Korean state's survival.
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- U.S. policy is to have the crisis discussed in a multilateral
forum to include North Korea's Asian neighbors, including South Korea,
China, Russia and Japan.
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