North Korea shows 'flexibility' on nuclear program after US concessions, South Korea says

Wednesday, January 24th 2007, 5:53 am

By: News On 6

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) _ North Korea has shown a new willingness to take steps toward dismantling its nuclear program after the United States offered concessions during bilateral talks last week, South Korean officials said Wednesday.

South Korea and the United States have presented a ``proactive'' proposal aimed at getting North Korea to live up to a September 2005 pact in which it pledged to abandon nuclear weapons in exchange for aid and security guarantees, Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said.

``North Korea is showing flexibility on this,'' he told reporters. He declined to elaborate on details of the proposal, saying negotiations were still under way.

But another South Korean official, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing the issue's sensitivity, said the minister was referring to an offer that the United States made during three days of one-on-one negotiations with North Korea in Berlin last week.

The official said the U.S. proposal includes ``various exceptional concessions,'' but declined to specify them.

North Korea has refused to discuss specific steps aimed at carrying out the 2005 disarmament accord, demanding Washington first desist from a campaign to isolate Pyongyang from the international financial system over Pyongyang's alleged counterfeiting and money laundering.

That defiant stance caused the last session of six-nation nuclear talks in December to end without any breakthrough.

The rare Berlin talks were between Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan. After the meetings, North Korea's Foreign Ministry said it reached an unspecified agreement, but did not elaborate.

On Tuesday, Kim told reporters in Beijing that the U.S. position has changed in a ``positive'' direction, suggesting that Washington may have backed down from its earlier position that the financial dispute was a law enforcement matter unconnected to the nuclear issue.

Kim also said the North's position could change as well.

North Korea tested its first-ever nuclear bomb in October, adding urgency to the six-nation talks that have been held since 2003 without making any concrete progress on disarming the communist nation.

No date has been set for the next round of negotiations involving China, Japan, Russia, the U.S. and the two Koreas, but officials say they should occur before mid-February.

Japan's nuclear envoy, Kenichiro Sasae, was in Beijing Wednesday for talks with his Chinese counterpart.

President Bush refrained from any criticism of North Korea in his State of the Union address Tuesday, saying simply that Washington was pursuing diplomacy with its partners to attain a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

Also Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke by telephone with her Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing, to discuss the North Korea nuclear issue and China-U.S. ties, China's Foreign Ministry said.