Feb 12, 2005 3 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – Arguing it was burned before in one-on-one talks with North Korea, the United States said Friday it had no interest in resuming direct discussions on Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. The White House said it continued to support a six-nation process designed to negotiate the elimination of the communist country’s nuclear armaments.

But with that process stalled, administration officials were beginning to discuss the possibility of referring the issue to the U.N. Security Council as an alternate approach.

The objective there would be to impose international sanctions to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to abandon his weapons program.

In Sapporo, Japan, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi came down firmly against that idea Friday. He said economic sanctions against the North could end any possibility that Pyongyang might rejoin the six-nation talks and end any chance of their success.

“I understand the feelings behind growing calls for economic sanctions, but dialogue and pressure are important,” Koizumi told reporters.

Han Sung Ryol, a senior North Korean diplomat at the United Nations, urged a direct dialogue with the U.S. in an interview with a South Korean newspaper. But in a subsequent interview, he appeared to backtrack, telling Associated Press Television News, “No, we do not ask for bilateral talks.” He said the key issue for North Korea was whether the U.S. planned to attack North Korea.

The U.S. has said repeatedly in recent years that it has no such plans and is intent on seeking a diplomatic solution.

On Thursday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry declared that the country had produced nuclear weapons and said it was calling off participation in the six-nation talks.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday the U.S. has no interest in direct talks.

“It’s not an issue between North Korea and the United States. It’s a regional issue,” McClellan said, noting the six-party format includes China, South Korea, Japan and Russia, in addition to the U.S. and North Korea itself.

At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher called attention to the unhappy outcome of a 1994 bilateral agreement with North Korea.

“When the U.S. and North Korea had direct negotiations to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, we got a deal and then North Korea started cheating on the deal very quickly, within a couple years,” he said.

The agreement fell apart in 2002 when the Bush administration alleged that North Korea had secretly begun a uranium enrichment program in violation of the spirit of the 1994 agreement.

That in turn led to the six-party disarmament negotiations that began in August 2003. Two subsequent rounds were held with little visible progress.

North Korea had been widely expected to resume the process early this year, but Thursday’s statement appeared to rule out that option for the time being.

The United States has been in touch with China, South Korea, Russia and Japan about North Korea’s opposition to renewing the multilateral talks. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet on Monday with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon. Japan’s foreign and defense ministers will visit Washington Feb. 19.