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WASHINGTON: Less than a week after the six-party talks in Beijing failed to defuse the nuclear crisis in Korean peninsula, China has asked US to abandon the idea of a de-nuclearised North Korea and to compromise with Pyongyang, a media report said on Friday. China wants the US to abandon its position that North Korea should unconditionally end and dismantle its nuclear weapons programme before any benefits, such as US security guarantee or economic aid, could be considered, a Chinese official told a US daily in an interview. North Korea has demanded a non-aggression treaty with the US in exchange...

<p>North Korea startled an international conference in Beijing last week by declaring its intention to test a nuclear bomb. But the fact that representatives of China, Russia, Japan and South Korea were there to be startled, and North Korea was there to startle them, suggests there is a slim possibility North Korea can be persuaded to give up its nuclear program without a resort to force.</p>

China blames US for the impasse in talks with N KoreaAFPTuesday, Sep 02, 2003,Page 6 China said yesterday US policy on North Korea was the biggest obstacle to resolving the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula, but expressed confidence the North wanted to work for a peaceful solution. Asked by reporters what he thought was the main obstacle to progress, China's Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi (&#29579;&#27589;), said: "The American policy towards DPRK -- this is the main problem we are facing." North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), had said its expectations at last...

September 2, 2003 Chinese Aide Says U.S. Is Obstacle in Korean Talks By JOSEPH KAHN EIJING, Sept. 1 — The Chinese official who played host to six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program said today that the United States was the "main problem" in reaching a diplomatic solution to the crisis, echoing the North's bitter assessment about why the talks had ended in acrimony. Asked about the obstacles that had arisen during the talks in Beijing last week, Wang Yi, a vice foreign minister who was China's chief delegate at the negotiations, replied, "America's policy toward the D.P.R.K. — that...

Howard hand in hand with China's iron glove Australian Angle30aug03 JOHN Howard was exceptionally complimentary of Chinese diplomacy towards North Korea when he was in Beijing earlier this month. The Chinese, he said, were playing a "constructive and positive" role on North Korea. Not only that, Australia and China had virtually identical aims on North Korea, seeking a peaceful outcome in which North Korea had no nuclear weapons. Everyone knew then that China had strongarmed Pyongyang into agreeing to six-nation talks, held this week in Beijing. But Howard had a much deeper confidence about Beijing's long-term position. Australian intelligence...

N. Korea declares it won't negotiate over nukes anymore SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA -- North Korea declared indignantly Saturday that it would conduct no more negotiations over its nuclear program, pouring cold water on people trying hard to put an enthusiastic spin on last week's six-nation talks in Beijing. "We no longer have interest or expectations either for these kind of talks," a North Korean spokesman told reporters at the Beijing airport, reading from a statement as the delegation prepared to fly home. The announcement left shrouded in doubt what participants in the talks had said was their key achievement: an...

Sat August 30, 2003 07:20 AM ET By Martin Nesirky SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Saturday the hardline U.S. stance at the Beijing nuclear negotiations meant there was no point in holding further talks and left it with no choice but to enhance its nuclear deterrent force. China -- North Korea's closest ally and organizer of last week's six-way talks -- sought to keep the momentum for dialogue going. A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman told the North's KCNA news agency Washington had adopted a harder line at the talks and had demanded Pyongyang "drop its gun first."...

BEIJING, Aug 30, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- North Korea no longer has "interest or expectations" in further talks on its nuclear program, a spokesman for Pyongyang's delegation to six-nation talks on the subject said Saturday. "There is no need for this kind of talks," the unidentified spokesman told reporters at Beijing's airport, reading from a statement as the delegation was leaving the Chinese capital after the landmark three-day meeting. "This round of talks was nothing more than empty talks," the spokesman said. "We no longer have interest or expectations either for this kind of talks." The United States,...

The United States, North Korea and four other nations ended three days of sometimes fiery negotiations here today and decided to keep talking, as Bush administration officials concluded that the diplomatic track still offered the best hope of resolving the Korean nuclear crisis. Though North Korea repeatedly threatened to test and deploy nuclear weapons if its demands for a nonaggression pact were not met in full, several senior administration officials said the six-party negotiations had in some respects "exceeded our expectations," persuading them to push for a new round soon. The officials expressed satisfaction that China, Russia, South Korea and...

VIENNA: The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Friday that North Korea has been guilty of nuclear "blackmail" and could not be trusted, though he was encouraged by the six-country talks that took place in Beijing. "I don't think they can be trusted," head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IDEA) Mohamed ElBaradei said in an interview on BBC television. "However, we would like to work with them and bring them back to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)." Pyongyang expelled the IAEA's inspectors at the start of the year and then withdrew from the NPT, the global pact...

THE EVOLVING NORTH KOREAN THREAT Amid multilateral talks in Asia to determine its nuclear future, analysts are warning about North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile advances. CIA estimates from earlier this year gauge that the Kim Jong-Il regime already has one or two nuclear weapons, and analysts tell the Agence France Presse (August 24) that the DPRK is now working hard to marry its newfound nuclear capabilities with its advanced ballistic missile program. If successful, such efforts would have sinister results. According to Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, the Director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Pyongyang can already target parts...

Why North Koreans Were Kidnappers By Brendan I. Koerner Posted Wednesday, August 27, 2003, at 2:19 PM PT At a six-nation summit on North Korea's nuclear ambitions, Japan is pressing Kim Jong-il's government for more info on the fates of the Japanese abductees who were spirited away to Pyongyang during the Cold War. Why did North Korea kidnap these Japanese citizens? The Hermit Kingdom—which only acknowledged these kidnappings last year—says the abductees were supposed to school North Korean spies in Japanese language and customs, so the agents could more easily slip into Japanese society. For years, Pyongyang had dismissed the...

Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - The U.S. government has declined to comment officially on reports saying North Korean representatives at six-party talks in Beijing have threatened that Pyongyang will declare itself a nuclear power. Both White House and State Department spokesmen at briefings Thursday sidestepped the subject. Reports citing unnamed officials said the North Koreans were sending out both conciliatory and belligerent messages, including a warning of a formal declaration of nuclear capability and the possibility of a nuclear test. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, speaking in Texas, described Thursday's second day of talks as a "positive session" that...

N. Korea Says U.S. Policy Endangers Talks SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Friday that prospects for another round of nuclear talks were in jeopardy because of inflexibility on the part of U.S. negotiators, a South Korean news agency reported. "As the United States refuses to express intentions to switch over its hostile policy against North Korea, prospects for the next round of talks have fallen into danger," said KCNA, the North's news agency. KCNA was quoted by Yonhap, a South Korean agency. The comments came at a six-nation meeting in China that included representatives of the United States,...

N Korea in nuclear concession Jonathan Watts in Beijing Friday August 29, 2003 The Guardian North Korea reportedly agreed yesterday to keep working with its neighbours for a nuclear-free peninsula - a concession which could conceivably pave the way for a settlement to its standoff with the US. On the second day of six-nation talks in Beijing, China said that the delegates had agreed on the need to meet again within months - the most that analysts expected from the meeting. But in a surprise departure from North Korea's usual stance, its delegates were also said to have accepted that...

White House divisions threaten talks, says Clinton aide By Andrew Ward in Seoul Published: August 28 2003 5:00 | Last Updated: August 28 2003 5:00 Few people can claim to know Kim Jong-il, North Korea's secretive communist dictator, but Wendy Sherman got closer than most. She met him in Pyongyang three years ago while serving as North Korea specialist in former US president Bill Clinton's administration. "He was intelligent, he was conversational but it would be overstating it to say he has a sophisticated view of the outside world," says Ms Sherman. "He watches CNN, he surfs the internet. But...

BEIJING ¯ Proposing four steps to end the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea has offered a comprehensive settlement with the United States that would lead to the dismantling of Pyeongyang’s weapons program. The details of the proposal were contained in the text of North Korea’s keynote address at the six-party talks here on the crisis. The text was obtained by the JoongAng Ilbo. Kim Yong-il, North Korea’s deputy foreign minister and the chief delegate of the talks, presented the proposal to the delegates of China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States on Wednesday. North Korea...

North Korea will formally declare it has nuclear weapons..

WASHINGTON - North Korea startled a six-nation conference in China on East Asian security by announcing its intentions to formally declare its possession of nuclear weapons and to carry out a nuclear test, an administration official said Thursday. North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il also told the gathering that his country has the means to deliver nuclear weapons, an apparent reference to the North's highly developed missile program.