THE KOREAS: S. Korea and U.S. Dismiss N. Korea’s Peace Talks Proposal

January 13, 2010

By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea and the United States said Tuesday that they would discuss a peace treaty with North Korea only after the North returned to six-nation disarmament talks and began dismantling its nuclear weapons program.

Seoul and Washington also rejected the North’s demand that United Nations sanctions be lifted before it returns to the talks.

“We’re not going to pay North Korea for coming back to the six-party-process,” P. J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman, said in Washington.

On Monday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry proposed “immediate” talks with the United States to negotiate a peace treaty that would formally end the 1950-3 Korean War, which ended in a truce, leaving the Korean Peninsula technically in a state of war.

The North said treaty talks could be held separately or be included in the six-nation talks, which include the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan. The talks have been in limbo since last spring, when North Korea withdrew to protest sanctions that were imposed after it tested its second nuclear device and some ballistic missiles.

“We can discuss a peace treaty only after the six-party talks are reopened and there is progress in the denuclearization of North Korea,” Defense Minister Kim Tae-young of South Korea said at a news conference Tuesday. “North Korea has a history of offering peace gestures with one hand while committing provocations with the other.”

Washington also said the North must first return to the talks and take “affirmative steps towards denuclearization.”

“Once they’re back within the process, once we have confidence that they’re meeting their obligations, then a wide range of other possible discussions open up,” Mr. Crowley said.

The stance reflects the allies’ suspicions that North Korea is trying to deflect the focus of the talks, which have so far focused on ending the North’s nuclear weapons program. North Korea says that asking it to give up its nuclear capabilities before it feels safe under a formal peace treaty is “like a gangster trying to disarm us at gunpoint.”

Mutual mistrust has made “sequence” — the diplomatic question of who does what first — a central point of contention during years of negotiations between North Korea and the United States.

Also Tuesday, the North Korean ambassador to China, Choe Jin-su, called together a small group of reporters to reiterate Pyongyang’s latest statement.

Mr. Choe said the signing of a peace treaty would help promote “denuclearization at a rapid tempo,” the Japanese news agency Kyodo reported. “Here I would like to stress ‘at a rapid tempo.’ ”

The Korean War began 60 years ago with a North Korean invasion of the South. The United States led United Nations forces in defense of the South and China fought for North Korea. An American general representing the U.N. Command signed a ceasefire pact with the Chinese and North Korean militaries, but South Korea did not.

The North had previously tried to keep the South out of peace talks, saying it fought the war with the Americans and not with a “South Korean puppet.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Choe, the North Korean diplomat, said he did not know whether South Korea wanted to be part of peace talks “because they didn’t even sign the truce.”

Mr. Kim, the South Korean defense minister, retorted: “Of course, South Korea should be included.”

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company