NK Refuses Giving Up Nuclear Plan

North Korea proposed yesterday through a statement of its Foreign Ministry a non-aggression treaty between North Korea and the US to solve the nuke issue . But it rejected the demand from South Korea and the US that it stop first its nuclear weapons development program.

But the result of the coordination process between South Korea, the US and Japan since North Korea effectively proposed through the statement to conclude the nonaggression treaty and the nuclear issue.

A spokesman of the North Korean Foreign Ministry refused the US demand for the withdrawal from the nuclear development program, saying, “The US and its supporters are arguing that negotiation should take place after we are disarmed. This is an abnormal logic. We cannot come to the negotiating table naked.”

He added, “We see the concluding of a nonaggression treaty between North Korea and the US as the rational and realistic way to solve the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. If the US legally admit the nonaggression treaty, we are willing to solve the security concerns of the US.”

The first official response from North Korea statement broadcast by state-owned Central and Pyongyang broadcasting systems came eight days after the Korean and US governments announced on the 17th North Korea`s admission of developing nuclear weapons.

The spokesman of North Korea`s Foreign Ministry explained the background of North Korea`s admission of its nuclear development program, saying, “We made clear to the US presidential envoy that we can have not only nuclear weapons but also even stronger weapons in order to protect autonomy and right to live facing increasing threat from the US.”

He added, “There are negotiation and deterrence to solve any kind of problem, but we want the former.”

Mentioning every provision of the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework, he claimed that the US has never comply with any single provision of the treaty. He said that the George W Bush administration nullified the North Korea-US Joint Statement and the Basic Framework by identifying North Korea as one of the axis of evil and including it in the list of preemptive nuclear attack.

Seok Tong-youn, spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement that South Korea urged North Korea to thoroughly reveal its nuclear development program and to clear the nuclear-related concerns in the international society for the sake of peace and safety on the Korean Peninsula.

Meanwhile an aide accompanying President Kim Dae-jung, who are visiting Mexico to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation(APEC) summit said that North Korea`s proposal of a nonaggression treaty has its own significance in that the Communist state is taking a step back from its demand for a peace treaty.

According to the Kyodo News Agency, however, a high-ranking official of the US State Department said that the US has no intension to respond to North Korea`s proposal of nonaggression for the time being. The news agency added that the official, who is staying in Mexico for APEC meeting, declined to further elaborate the issue.

The Japanese government is trying to identify the real intension of North Korea while it has not made an official reaction to the North`s proposal. Japan`s Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro told reporters that he did not know what North Korea was up to.

But major Japanese newspapers have made it their headlines. Nihon Keizei Shimbun analyzed that North Korea`s proposal is aimed to take advantage of the nuclear issue as a leverage to make the US scrap its hostile policy toward it and to maintain the Kim Jong-il regime.

Mainichi Shimbun reported that the proposal reveals North Korea`s intention to promote dialogue with the US, but did not clarify its position on the nuclear development program.

The newspaper also said, “Concluding a peace treaty is not an easy job because the parties should change the basic framework of the armistice pact and the normalization of the relations between the US and North Korea constitutes a prerequisite for the pact. But nonaggression does not require any of them.”

ysmo@donga.com esprit@donga.com