S. Korea comes up with 'flexible' plan on N. Korea

S. Korea comes up with 'flexible' plan on N. Korea

Reuters, Beijing

North Korea and the United States disagreed on the opening day on Monday of six-way working talks on how to end Pyongyang's nuclear programs while South Korea offered aid to the struggling North in return for progress.

Seoul would be more flexible in the talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis and was ready to provide a security guarantee in return for nuclear dismantlement, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon told Reuters in an interview.

North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China began two days of working-level talks to lay the foundation for a third round of complex discussions this week on the crisis.

Reclusive Pyongyang held out the prospect of a "road map" for freezing or dismantling its nuclear program if the United States and others said what they would give in return, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.

The United States rejected the offer, saying the communist state must first come up with a detailed plan for a freeze leading to eventual nuclear dismantlement, it quoted a South Korean official as saying.

Officials from several parties involved have cautioned that scant progress can be expected at the senior-level talks, aimed at ending a 20-month standoff between the United States and North Korea over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

"It is of crucial importance to have some visible progress, to have North Korea commit themselves to dismantling their nuclear development program completely in a transparent manner," South Korea's Ban said of his hopes for the third round of talks, which begin on Wednesday in Beijing.

"In such a case, we would be ready to provide the corresponding measures in a formal security assurance and international economic assistance including energy, which they are badly in need of," he said, repeating Seoul's offer of aid to its impoverished northern neighbor.

This year, the United States shifted its hardline position to say it would not oppose offers of aid from other countries to the North in return for a freeze, but insisted on the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of the program before U.S. security guarantees.

"We would like to make quite sure that North Korea's nuclear program including HEU (heavily enriched uranium) should be frozen, ultimately leading to complete and verifiable dismantlement," Ban said in an interview on the sidelines of an Asian forum in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao.

"In such a case, as we have already said, we are ready to supply energy assistance as a first step," he said, adding that his delegate would propose this at the talks.

"This is a more acceptable, and I think more flexible (proposal), than previous ones," Ban said.

North Korea is unlikely to respond well to mention of uranium.

The crisis erupted in October 2002, when U.S. officials said North Korea had disclosed it was working on a secret program to enrich uranium, in violation of an international agreement.

North Korea denies a uranium enrichment program, but in 2003 it threw out UN inspectors, withdrew from the nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty and restarted a mothballed nuclear reactor from which weapons-grade plutonium can be extracted.

"The sides outlined their basic positions with regard to nuclear dismantlement and 'freeze-versus-countermeasures'," Yonhap quoted Yang Seok-hwan, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official, as saying, quoting negotiators at Monday's talks.

China proposed putting off the opening of the senior-level main talks by one day so that the countries involved could hold a series of bilateral meetings on Wednesday, Yonhap said.

But Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing appeared upbeat. "I hope we will make progress. We hope the peninsula will be nuclear-free and enjoy peace and stability," Li told reporters.