N. Korea says no to UN over nuclear issues

N. Korea says no to UN over nuclear issues

SEOUL (AFP): North Korea rejected yesterday a UN Security Council appeal to open its suspect nuclear sites to international inspectors, but diplomats held out hope in a new "China phase" breaking the tense impasse.

"Our nuclear issue is, by its nature, not a topic for discussion at the UN Security Council," said a North Korean foreign ministry spokesman quoted by the country's official KCNA news agency monitored in Tokyo.

Calling the UN appeal an "unreasonable demand" the spokesman flatly said an inspection last month was "sufficient" and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was applying double standards for small and large countries.

But diplomats in Tokyo said North Korea's rejection came as no surprise. They said the door was not necessarily closed to a negotiated settlement and they expected the situation to evolve in the coming months.

In Seoul, senior officials talked of a "new phase" in the year-long impasse and said responsibility had now shifted squarely into the hands of China, as reports said Beijing was preparing to send a large delegation to Pyongyang for the 82nd birthday, on April 15, of enigmatic Stalinist leader Kim Il-sung.

The officials plan to brief Kim on developments and discuss the nuclear dispute, the South's news agency Yonhap said.

China, whose troops battled the UN in South Korea in the 1950- 53 war, is Stalinist North Korea's last major ally and molded the UN appeal which North Korea rejected.

"I think in that sense the possibility of a negotiated settlement is brighter than before," first deputy foreign minister Choi Dong-jin told journalists here, adding that the rejected UN appeal was in effect "Chinese."

Washington, Seoul and Tokyo are now all pinning their hopes on China, echoed South Korean Foreign Minister Han Sung-joo after discussions in Tokyo.

"We should not speak of an impasse. There is always the possibility that things could change on the North Korean side, on the U.S. side or on the United Nations side," said one Tokyo based diplomat.

True response

A second diplomat in Tokyo said he expected Pyongyang's "true" response to come in mid-April or even later as North Korea was still hoping to renew informal contacts with Washington, suspended after the failure of the IAEA mission to the North's Yongbyon nuclear complex last month.

Washington's carrot to try to stop North Korea developing a nuclear arsenal has been to offer full diplomatic recognition and economic aid to Pyongyang.

The Stalinist regime's economy has been spiraling downhill since the collapse of the East Bloc and it reportedly fears that without nuclear weapons the United States will try to take advantage of its economic weakness and overrun it.

Meanwhile in Seoul confusion and speculation reigned in advance of a trip here April 17-19 by U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, over whether Seoul might drop its insistence on linking North-South Korea talks to the nuclear issue.

The talks resulting in an envoy exchange, along with the IAEA inspections, were a precondition for Washington to resume relations with North Korea under the old package deal which collapsed with the failed March 3-15 Yongbyong checks.

Time magazine reported in its April 4 edition that the reason the Yongbyong checks failed was that Pyongyang had tried to "horse trade" IAEA access to its most critical suspect nuclear site in return for a delay in the North-South envoy exchange.

Choi Dong-jin conceded that there was wide discussion of the crucial delinkage issue "even in the newspapers" in the context of what, if anything, could nudge the Stalinist north towards nuclear transparency.

"There is no reason why we cannot discuss this possibility, because it has entered a kind of new phase now," Choi said, adding that some argued that if dropping the linkage would be productive "let them just go ahead."

But he stressed that the official South Korean government position remained that the linkage must be maintained.