Nations urge newly declared nuke power N. Korea to talk

North Korea demanded bilateral talks with the United States over its nuclear weapons programme but Washington quickly rejected the idea yesterday and insisted Pyongyang return to six-party negotiations.

"There's plenty of opportunities for North Korea to speak directly with us in the context of the six-party talks," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

North Korea said on Thursday it had acquired nuclear weapons to boost its defenses in the face of US hostility and the policy of the White House to seek "regime change", and said it would not return to the multilateral talks. A North Korean diplomat at the United Nations said in an interview published yesterday: "If the United States wants to talk to us directly, it can be seen as a sign of a change in the US hostile policy towards North Korea."

Mr McClellan insisted President George W. Bush will stick to the negotiating format in which the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia negotiate with North Korea.

The six parties have held three rounds of talks since August 2003 and the process has stalled. Countries around the globe had urged North Korea to return to talks on ending its nuclear program after it said it had nuclear weapons and pulled out of the disarmament discussions.

"All of North Korea's neighbors in the region recognise that this is a regional problem and it requires a multilateral approach for resolving it," Mr McClellan said. "We believe the six-party talks, like North Korea's neighbours, are the way to resolve the situation."

The move by the North presents a major challenge to Mr Bush, who also faces a growing crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions, and some analysts said was a dangerous negotiating tactic.

"The assessment is that North Korea may be trying to raise its negotiating stakes," South Korean vice Foreign Minister Lee Tae-shik was quoted as saying. "But it could turn into a very serious problem if the North takes additional steps."

Mr McClellan said that, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday, "North Korea should have no reason to believe that any nation wants to attack them, that there's a proposal on table that provides the way forward for North Korea to eliminate its nuclear weapons programme and to realise better relations with the international community when they make that commitment."

While North Korea pulled out of the six-way talks, comments by the deputy chief of North Korea's mission at the United Nations appeared to leave the door open a crack to a possible resumption of negotiations.

"We'll return to the six-party talks if conditions are ripe and such a decision can be justified," South Korea's Hankyoreh newspaper quoted Han Song-ryol as saying in its internet edition yesterday. He added that direct talks would be a change in US "hostile policy" towards the North.

Mr Bush has backed a diplomatic solution to the crisis but now faces two nations he once named as part of an "axis of evil" being defiant about their nuclear programs - North Korea and Iran. He went to war with Iraq, the third "axis" nation.

China, South Korea and Germany joined calls from the US and elsewhere for Pyongyang to return to the table.