N Korea Urges Restart of Nuclear Talks without Preconditions

Local Editor

North Korea's chief nuclear envoy called on six nations involved in the stalled talks on the country's nuclear program to restart negotiations without preconditions.

"We are ready to enter the six-party talks without preconditions," North Korea's First Vice Foreign Minister, Kim Kye-gwam, said at a forum organized by China's foreign ministry in Beijing, as quoted by South Korea's Yonhap News Agency.

Kim claimed the "preconditions" set by the US and South Korea "are in violation of the spirit of the September 19 Joint Statement," a reference to the agreement reached in 2005 under which Pyongyang pledged to drop its nuclear weapons program in exchange for a promise from the US that Americans would not attack or invade North Korea.

He was speaking at a one-day event organized by the Chinese government, which hopes to reignite the six-party channel. The forum, involving both Koreas, China, the US, Japan, and Russia, has been dormant since 2008.

This comes as new satellite imagery surfaced earlier this week which seemed to show steam coming from a newly rebuilt nuclear reactor in North Korea. First reported by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, it could indicate that the solitary nation is making good on its promise to resume the production of plutonium to fuel its small nuclear program.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team