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   Don't meddle, N. Korea warns Seoul

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Topic: Don't meddle, N. Korea warns Seoul (Read 237 times)

Rhune
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Don't meddle, N. Korea warns Seoul
« on: Apr 28^th, 2003, 8:51am »

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Don't meddle, N. Korea warns Seoul
Monday, April 28, 2003 Posted: 4:17 AM EDT (0817 GMT)

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea has told South Korea to mind its own business and not meddle in its standoff with Washington over its suspected nuclear weapons program.

South Korean officials, in Pyongyang for three-days of high-level inter-Korean talks, were told by their Northern counterparts on Monday that the nuclear dispute was between North Korea and the United States only.

Seoul's delegates have expressed concern over North Korea's alleged nuclear program and has been demanding Pyongyang to abandon any atomic weapons development.

But North Korea refused to discuss the issue with the South during the opening two days of talks. The meeting is due to end Tuesday.

"The Northern side reiterated that the nuclear issue is a matter between the North and the United States," said a statement from the South Korean government. "But they said they wanted to resolve the matter peacefully."

North Korea has also stonewalled efforts from the southern delegation to get confirmation of an admission -- apparently made during talks with U.S. officials in Beijing last week -- that Pyongyang was in possession of at least one nuclear weapon and would "demonstrate" the fact soon.

North Korea has declined to say whether it has such a device.

Instead, the North officials said they had presented a "new, bold" initiative to the Americans on easing the standoff with Washington, but declined to elaborate, a South Korean government spokesman said Sunday.

North Korea instead tried to focus in inter-Korean economic projects born out of the historic North-South summit in June 2000, South Korean officials said.

South Korea says the North's reported possession of a nuclear arsenal violates a 1992 agreement to keep the Korean Peninsular nuclear-free.

North Korea has maintained that it considers its nuclear ambitions irrelevant to the talks or to relations on the Korean Peninsula.

Although Washington says it has no plans to attack North Korea, Pyongyang wants a non-aggression pact with the U.S. before it agrees to abandon its nuclear program.

That demand was reiterated in North Korea's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper Sunday.

"The DPRK [North Korea] will be left with no option but to do everything to defend itself unless the U.S. legally guarantees no use of arms including nukes against the DPRK,'' said the statement, published in English by the North's state-run KCNA.

The U.S. says it will not sign any such treaty but some sort of written guarantee might be possible.

North and South Korea share the world's most heavily fortified border at the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) -- with about one million troops facing each other.

The U.S. says it will confer with its allies about the possibility of U.N. sanctions on North Korea in an effort to force it to give up its nuclear plans.

North Korea says any international sanctions would effectively be a declaration of war.

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