YONHAP NEWS

(LEAD) U.S. to continue engaging N. Korea for 6-way talks: Clinton

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 (Yonhap) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Sunday said the Obama administation will continue engaging North Korea to convince the communist state to return to stalled international nuclear talks.

   "Engagement has brought us a lot in the last year," Clinton said in an interview with CNN's "State of the Union." "In North Korea, when we said that we were willing to work with North Korea if they were serious about returning to the Six-Party Talks and about denuclearizing in an irreversible way, they basically did not respond in the first instance."

   She described North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, while noting non-state networks like al-Qaida pose the greater threat.

   "A nuclear-armed country like North Korea or Iran poses both a real or a potential threat," she said. "But I think that most of us believe the greater threats are the transnational non-state networks, primarily the extremists, the fundamentalist Islamic extremists who are connected to al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula, al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan, al-Qaida in the Maghreb."

   With regard to Pyongyang, the Obama's administration's continued engagement produced strong international coordination to adopt U.N. sanctions to pressure the impoverised North back to the nuclear talks, Clinton said.
"But because we were willing to engage, we ended up getting a very strong sanctions regime against North Korea that China signed onto and Russia signed onto and right now is being enforced around the world," Clinton said.

   China, North Korea's staunchest communist ally, has agreed to the sanctions resolutions due to the U.S. continued engagement, she said.

   "Because we extended it, a neighbor like China knew we were going the extra mile and all of a sudden said you're not just standing there hurling insults at them, you've said all right, fine, we're willing to work with them," she said. "They haven't responded, so we're going to sign on to these very tough measures."

   The sanctions imposed after North Korea's nuclear and missile tests early last year prompted the North to boycott the six-party talks, involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia.

   North Korea has demanded that, prior to the resumption of the nuclear talks, sanctions be lifted and a peace treaty be signed to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

   Washington insists that Pyongyang return to the six-party talks before discussing sanctions or any other issues involved.

   Wang Jiarui, the head of the international department of the Chinese Communist Party, is currently in Pyongyang to help jumpstart the deadlocked nuclear talks which have been on and off since their inception in 2003.

   Wang is expected to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as he did in the four previous visits to the North Korean capital since 2004.
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley Friday appreciated China's effort to revive the nuclear talks.

   "The Chinese senior officials have regular discussions with North Korea," Crowley said of Wang's North Korean trip. "We value that leadership by China."

   In another conciliatory gesture, North Korea Saturday freed Robert Park citing the "sincere repentance of his wrongdoings."

   The 28-year-old Korean American activist illegally entered the North on Christmas Day to draw international attention to the North's human rights records, believed to be among the worst in the world with several detention camps accommodating hundreds of thousands of political prisoners.

   North Korea also released two American journalists in August held for months for illegal entry while reporting on North Korean defectors after former U.S. President Bill Clinton met with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang.

   North Korea is holding another American citizen who illegally entered the North in late January.

   Crowley said Friday that the U.S. was still seeking consular access to the person, who has not been identified, through the Swedish mission, which represents U.S. interests in North Korea due to Washington's lack of diplomatic ties.

   Crowley also said that the U.S. is ready to provide humanitarian assistance to North Korea suffering from a severe food shortage, noting North Korea's recent revaluation of its currency had "a disastrous effect on the North Korean people."

   "This is why we continue to stress to North Korea that your people can have a brighter future if you are willing to work constructively with the international community, choose to apply your resources to feed your people rather than applying your resources to build missiles and other weaponry that potentially destabilizes the region," he said.

   hdh@yna.co.kr
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