U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talks Sunday in Seoul about luring North Korea back to six-party nuclear negotiations. Rice is visiting several Asian nations, in part to jump-start talks about North Korea's nuclear program. (Teri Weaver / S&S)
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talks Sunday in Seoul about luring North Korea back to six-party nuclear negotiations. Rice is visiting several Asian nations, in part to jump-start talks about North Korea's nuclear program. (Teri Weaver / S&S)
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks as South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon listens at a press conference Sunday in Seoul. (Teri Weaver / S&S)
SEOUL — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday reaffirmed the Bush administration’s determination to lure North Korea back to multination negotiations about its nuclear programs, adding that the communist state could use the talks to find “the respect that they have desired and get the assistance that they need.”
The softer rhetoric came as Rice made her first Asian tour as America’s top diplomat. The trip, in part, is meant to revive nuclear negotiations with North Korea and ask for more direct help from China to persuade North Korea, which trades with China, to accept fuel and other economic incentives in return for dismantling its nuclear weapons program.
“I would hope that all of this taken together would suggest to North Korea that the six-party talks are the place that they can actually get the respect that they have desired and get the assistance that they need,” Rice said during a 30-minute news conference at the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Rice arrived Saturday evening in South Korea and went straight to an underground bunker south of Seoul meant to serve as a command headquarters for U.S. and South Korean troops if war were to break out on the peninsula.
“I wanted to come here to thank you for what you do on the front lines of freedom,” she told more than 100 servicemembers, according to The New York Times. “I know you face a close- in threat every day.”
North Korea, which announced it had nuclear weapons capabilities in early February, has said it would rather discuss its nuclear programs solely with the United States, rather than in six-party talks that add China, Japan, Russia and South Korea to the mix.
On Sunday, Rice said that abandoning the six-party format is not an option. Her counterpart, Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, echoed that.
North Korea “would like to get back to a time when this was an issue between the United States and North Korea,” Rice said, saying that Russia, China, Japan and South Korea also share an acute interest in controlling nuclear programs in North Korea.
“This is an issue of the neighborhood, and what kind of Korean peninsula we’re going to have,” she said.
