Foreign minister says standoff on Korean peninsula will not be resolved until US changes tone
North Korea's top diplomat has said the US must "unconditionally" accept its offer of dialogue if it wants to ease tensions on the divided Korean peninsula, adding that hostile policies by Washington against his country make war a possibility.
North Korea surprised many by offering to talk to the US and return to long-stalled international nuclear disarmament talks last month after weeks of tension following its nuclear test in February. The country also recently eased its warlike rhetoric, but has still vowed to bolster its nuclear arsenal, citing what it calls US military threats. US officials have responded coolly to North Korea's overtures, saying Pyongyang must first demonstrate its sincerity on nuclear disarmament with concrete actions.
The North's nuclear weapons programme was a key topic at the 27-country Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) regional forum, held on Tuesday in Brunei, joining other hot-button regional issues such as South China Sea territorial disputes. Asia's largest security forum includes the US, North Korea and the four other countries involved in six-nation talks on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions in return for aid.
During the conference, the North Korean foreign minister, Pak Ui-chun, appealed again for direct talks with the US.
"The US must unconditionally accede to … our goodwill gesture if it is truly interested in ending the vicious circle of intensifying tension on the Korean peninsula and safeguarding peace and stability," Pak said, according to the North Korean delegation official Choe Myong-nam.
Pak said there was "a touch-and-go situation in which a war can break out any time" on the Korean peninsula, and US hostility against the North was primarily responsible for that, Choe told reporters. Pak said the US must normalise relations with North Korea and lift sanctions against the country, adding that the North Korean nuclear standoff would not be resolved unless the US changed its tone, according to Choe.
It is unlikely the US will accept North Korea's dialogue offer any time soon. On Monday, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, stepped up pressure on the North to abandon its atomic ambitions, saying key regional powers, including North Korea's ally China, were "absolutely united" in demanding nuclear disarmament.
After meeting his counterparts from China, South Korea and Japan, Kerry told reporters: "I want to emphasise … all four of us are absolutely united and absolutely firm in our insistence that the future with respect to North Korea must include denuclearisation.
"China made clear to me they have made very firm statements and very firm steps that they have taken with respect to the implementation of that policy."
China, North Korea's longtime ally and main aid provider, was angered by the North's ramping up of tensions and has since supported tightening UN sanctions and cracked down on North Korean banking activity.
The nuclear disarmament talks – which involve the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia – have been stalled since North Korea quit the negotiations in 2009 to protest against international condemnation over a rocket launch.
Since the Asean security forum includes all six countries involved in the talks, it has previously provided a chance to use informal discussions to break stalemates over the nuclear standoff. In 2011, top nuclear envoys from the two Koreas met on the sidelines of the forum in Bali, Indonesia, and agreed to work toward a resumption of the six-nation talks.
But there have been no reports that North Korea had similar talks with the US or South Korea in Brunei. US and South Korean officials have said they have no plans to meet privately with North Korea.
The Korean peninsula officially remains in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean war ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. The US keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea as deterrence against potential aggression from North Korea.