NORTH KOREA: North Korea has threatened to abandon the 1953 Korean War armistice if sanctions or a naval blockade are imposed because of its suspected nuclear weapons programme.
The United States yesterday dismissed the North's threat as part of a "rather predictable pattern" of escalating rhetoric.
"What you've seen is a rather predictable series of escalatory statements from North Korea," said White House spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer. "This remains an issue for the international community to deal with, and that remains our approach."
North Korea is demanding a non-aggression pact with the US while Washington wants multilateral talks to press Pyongyang to verifiably halt its suspected nuclear weapons programme.
It was not clear whether yesterday's statement, from the North Korean People's Army (KPA), was anything more than fresh brinkmanship.
There was no sign of unusual tension at the Panmunjom truce village which straddles the north-south border. Ten North Korean soldiers escorted a handful of Russian and Chinese tourists on the northern side of the frontier line.
The North Korean Foreign Minister, Mr Paek Nam-sun, had talks in Beijing yesterday with China's Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Wang Yi. "Both sides said that the current Korean peninsula issue should be resolved through peaceful means and dialogue," a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman said.
Diplomats in Beijing said that China had been applying pressure quietly, although it remained opposed to sanctions against the unpredictable North, fearing that this could provoke Pyongyang further or even trigger a collapse which would destabilise the region.
Russia, which is also a key player in the crisis because of its ties with Pyongyang, believes that the impasse can be resolved.
"The Korean side has declared clearly enough that it has no nuclear weapons programme," said Deputy Foreign Minister Mr Alexander Losyukov, a special envoy on North Korea. "There are no nuclear weapons and, if they are given certain security guarantees by the United States, the Koreans would be ready to prove this fact by granting \ inspectors an opportunity to verify this information," he told reporters in Almaty after talks with his Kazakh counterpart
But Pyongyang shows no signs of reining in the rhetoric. "The KPA . . . will be left with no option but to take a decisive step to abandon its commitment to implement the Armistice Agreement . . . and free itself from the binding force of all its provisions, regarding the possible sanctions to be taken by the US side against the DPRK (North Korea)," the North's army said in its statement, which was issued by the official Korean Central News Agency.
"If the US side continues violating and misusing the Armistice Agreement as it pleases, there will be no need for the DPRK to remain bound to the AA uncomfortably," the statement concluded.