Saturday, January 3, 2004
Japan, US, S Korea to insist on denuclearised N Korea: Report
Associated Press Tokyo, January 3
Japan, the United States and South Korea will demand that North Korea scrap all its nuclear facilities when diplomats meet next to try to resolve the year-old crisis over its moves to develop nuclear weapons, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
The report by the Yomiuri newspaper suggested the three allies had no plans to restart a recently suspended project to build a pair of nuclear reactors to generate badly needed electricity for the impoverished communist state. Citing unnamed Japanese government sources, the newspaper said senior officials from the three nations had agreed North Korea should not be allowed to "operate nuclear facilities even for power generation or other civilian purposes" as long as Kim Jong Il remains the country's leader because of the possibility they could be used to develop weapons covertly. The allies will demand that North Korea agree to "dispose of" all its nuclear facilities at the next round of six-nation talks to end the standoff, the report said.
Any future energy assistance will be limited to providing help with the construction of non-nuclear thermal power plants, the newspaper said, adding that the policy had been decided at a series of meetings through December. The report came a day after news that North Korea had invited a delegation of US nuclear experts to visit its main nuclear complex next week. The visit would be the first by outsiders to the site since United Nations monitors were expelled at the end of 2002.
© Hindustan Times Ltd. 2004.