North says it is taking 'recent issue seriously'

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North says it is taking 'recent issue seriously'

In the first public acknowledgment of the new situation created by the disclosure of its secret nuclear weapons project, North Korea's No. 2 leader and head of state Kim Yong-nam said Monday that Pyeongyang is "taking the recent issue seriously."

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, meanwhile, took pains in a U.S. television appearance over the weekend to avoid pronouncing the 1994 U.S.-Pyeongyang nuclear agreement dead. Both Seoul and Washington repeated statements that nothing had been decided on the next step.

Meeting with South Korea's unification minister, Jeong Se-hyun, in Pyeongyang, Mr. Kim said, "We are prepared to resolve the security issues through dialogue if the United States is willing to withdraw its policy of hostility toward the North."

A South Korean Unification Ministry official, Rhee Bong-jo, acting as spokesman for the South, said Mr. Kim did not use the word "nuclear." "We focused on the nuclear issue," Mr. Rhee said, "and the North indicated that it was preparing to state a position on this issue."

Mr. Kim's acknowledgment was followed by a Radio Pyeongyang broadcast that said the 1994 agreement stands at "a grave crossroads" of possible nullification because of the delay in the delivery of nonmilitary nuclear reactors, which had been "the key point in the agreement" between the North and the United States. That agreement was predicated on the North's discontinuing its nuclear-weapons program, which it admitted last week it had not done.

A U.S. State Department official told the JoongAng Ilbo in Washington that whether to try to salvage the 1994 agreement is not a matter for the United States alone to decide. There are reasons for the United States to continue the agreement, the official said, denying a New York Times report over the weekend that the decision has been made to scrap it. "It won't be a simple decision to make," he said.

South Korea's Foreign Minister Choi Sung-hong also denied that report Monday, saying that Seoul and Washington are discussing next steps. "The North Korean nuclear program is a grave and serious issue," Mr. Choi told reporters, "and there is agreement between the South and the United States that it is unacceptable under any circumstances."

Ministerial-level delegations from North and South Korea convened Monday for a second meeting in Pyeongyang. The South proposed that the two sides' defense ministers discuss South Korean abductees and other issues to ease military tension. The North invited Seoul's involvement in the development of the Gaeseong industrial complex.

In Japan, the Tokyo Shimbun reported Monday that North Korea had acquired a large volume -- more than 1,000 units -- of equipment used to enrich uranium for possible use in nuclear weapons development. The equipment was supplied by Pakistan, the report said. Pakistan has strenuously denied involvement in North Korean nuclear development.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said Monday that it had obtained unconfirmed intelligence in 1999 about a possible movement of uranium enriching equipment into North Korea and relayed it to the United States. A spokesman, Brigadier General Hwang Eui-don, said the seriousness of a possible nuclear program in the North was not realized before August.

by Kim Jin, Lee Young-jong

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