US dangles carrot of energy aid for Nth Korea in push for talks

By PAUL ECKERT in Seoul

The top United States envoy for Asia says that Washington is willing to talk to North Korea and would even address its energy shortages if the nuclear crisis could be resolved.

"We are of course willing to talk," US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said yesterday in South Korea's capital, Seoul.

"Once we get beyond nuclear weapons, there may be opportunities with the US, with private investors, with other countries to help North Korea in the energy area."

But Kelly's task is complicated by rising anti-US sentiment in South Korea, where many people are critical of the half-century relationship with the US and keen for more say in policy on the Korean Peninsula.

"We're going to be talking here with government people over how are some of the best ways to do that," Kelly said after talks with South Korea's President-elect Roh Moo Hyun.

The latest round of Stalinist North Korea's apparent game of brinkmanship to force the US to the negotiating table began last month, when Pyongyang threw out United Nations weapons inspectors.

Pyongyang, which the Bush Administration suspects of developing nuclear arms, last week pulled out of a global treaty aimed at preventing the spread of atomic weapons and said it was free to resume missile-firing tests.

It heaped abuse on the US over the weekend, saying its people could disappear in "a sea of fire" and again denying it had ever admitted to a nuclear weapons programme.

Kelly called the hardline anti-US rhetoric and threats to restart missile tests "a little mystifying" and repeated US statements that Pyongyang's diplomats covered no new ground in weekend talks in New Mexico with the former US Ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson.

Richardson urged the Bush Administration to open talks with Pyongyang to defuse the nuclear crisis. "What I think the Administration needs to do, with all due respect, is just pick up the phone."

Kelly arrived in Seoul on Sunday for his first visit to the region since October, when he visited Pyongyang and said after meetings with senior officials that North Korea had admitted a covert nuclear arms programme.

Roh explained to Kelly that his incoming Government would not accept a nuclear North Korea and wanted to play a leading role in crafting a peaceful solution to the crisis.

Roh, who takes office on February 25, underscored his support for the bilateral military alliance under which the US stations 37,000 troops in South Korea.

Kelly was to meet Roh's transition team and Foreign Minister Choi Sung Hong yesterday and hold talks with officials at the presidential Blue House today to convey that Washington is willing to talk to North Korea, but not to negotiate new terms to resolve the nuclear crisis.

- REUTERS

Herald feature: North Korea