NORTH KOREA: North Korea has said economic sanctions over its nuclear programme would mean war and urged the US to sit down and talk, just hours after Washington signalled that dialogue was still an option.
President George W. Bush, who has branded the communist state part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran, said on Monday that he remained open to dialogue but White House officials said the North must first end efforts to develop atomic weapons. Pyongyang's KCNA news agency denounced the brief seizure last month of a shipload of North Korean Scud missiles bound for Yemen by the US, calling it "part of the US-tailored containment strategy against the DPRK [North Korea].
"The strategy means total economic sanctions aimed at isolating and stifling the DPRK," the agency said yesterday.
"Sanctions mean a war and the war knows no mercy. The US should opt for dialogue with the DPRK, not for war, clearly aware that it will have to pay a very high price for such reckless acts," KCNA added. A South Korean Unification Ministry official said that North Korea customarily emits shrill rhetoric, but that its words were being watched carefully because of its nuclear brinkmanship.
"People do not think that there is going to be a war," said the official. "But this time, North Korea's nuclear threat can be taken seriously because the North has broken its promises to the United States and the international community."
A South Korean presidential envoy headed to Washington yesterday in a fresh bid to defuse the crisis that flared up last month, when Pyongyang expelled UN nuclear inspectors and vowed to restart a reactor idled under a 1994 pact which froze its nuclear programme in exchange for oil from the West.
National security adviser, Mr Yim Sung-joon, was expected to suggest that the US gives North Korea security assurances and promises to resume energy supplies in return for the North agreeing again to abandon its nuclear programme.
Washington insists that the North end its quest for nuclear arms. Pyongyang demands that the US, which keeps 37,000 troops in the South, sign a non-aggression pact. Mr Bush said on Monday the US would talk with North Korea but a White House official said dialogue could start only after the North dismantles its weapon programmes.
"We'll have dialogue. We've had dialogue with North Korea," Mr Bush told reporters after a cabinet meeting. He did not elaborate on the kind of dialogue he envisaged but said the US had no intention of invading North Korea.
Washington has previously ruled out immediate negotiations with North Korea while saying that low-level contacts continued through the North Korean UN mission in New York.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Mr Zhang Qiyue, expressed Beijing's opposition to sanctions, while saying "denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula is very important and beneficial to the Korean peninsula itself, the whole of Asia and the entire world".
Impoverished North Korea depends on foreign food aid after years of poor harvests, mismanagement and hunger. Analysts say the North may have sparked the latest confrontation in the hope of wresting more concessions from the West.
A South Korean analyst said the danger of North Korean economic collapse was greater than any war threat.
"What we should be concerned about the most is the collapse of the North Korean economy which will make a deep dent in our economy and the Chinese economy," said Mr Kim Young-ik, a senior economist with Daishin Securities. - (Reuters)