Powell says North Korea may be easing stance on nuclear crisis talks

WAR.WIRE

Powell says North Korea may be easing stance on nuclear crisis talks
SANTIAGO (AFP) Nov 18, 2004
North Korea may be relaxing its insistence on one-to-one talks with the United States to defuse a crisis over its nuclear weapons program, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday.

"We have seen a few signals coming out of North Korea where they said: 'No, we never insisted that it had to be solved in a bilateral way'. We will have to wait and see," Powell told reporters accompanying him on a trip to Chile to join the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

If confirmed by Pyongyang, it could jolt life back into multilateral talks handling the standoff.

Three rounds of multilateral talks have taken place since the stand-off erupted in October 2002 bringing together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States in Beijing. All but North Korea are members of APEC.

North Korea boycotted a fourth round of talks scheduled for Beijing in September in order to wait out the US presidential election in November, according to many analysts, when Bush triumphed over Democratic contender John Kerry.

"The (US) election is now over," Powell said.

Efforts are underway to lure North Korea back to the table.

"We moved in June. We put down a good a good new proposal and it was welcomed by all our partners there," Powell said.

"The North Koreans took it aboard and they have been studying it."

The US proposal would give Pyongyang three months to shut down and seal its nuclear weapons facilities in return for aid, security guarantees and easing of its political and economic isolation.

North Korea is not on the official APEC agenda.

But Powell said the United States expected to raise the crisis in discussions with some of the other countries involved.

"I will see what my Chinese and South Korean colleagues have picked up in recent days (about the North Korean stance)," he said.

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