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N.Korea's Kim says wants denuclearization of peninsula
Fri Jan 23, 2009 5:55pm EST
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By Lucy Hornby and Jack Kim
BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea is committed to removing nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula and wants to co-exist peacefully, leader Kim Jong-il said on Friday in his first meeting with a foreign envoy since his suspected stroke in August.
China's state Xinhua news agency said Kim made the comments during a visit to Pyongyang by a senior Chinese official.
Analysts have said a meeting with a foreign visitor would offer evidence that Kim, who U.S. and South Korean officials said fell seriously ill in August, was well enough to run Asia's only communist dynasty and make decisions about its nuclear program.
"The North Korean side will commit itself to the denuclearization of the North Korean peninsula, and hopes to co-exist peacefully with other involved parties," Xinhua news agency quoted Kim as saying.
"North Korea is not willing to see tensions emerge in the peninsula, and is willing to strengthen consultation and cooperation with China to push forward the six-party talks," Kim added, referring to multilateral talks aimed at having destitute North Korea scrap its nuclear program in return for aid.
Xinhua and the North's KCNA news agency said Kim met Wang Jiarui, visiting head of the Chinese Communist Party's International Department, on Friday.
It is rare for Kim to be quoted directly
His comments came after the North hinted in a New Year's message that it was willing to work with new U.S. President Barack Obama by saying it wanted good relations with countries that treated it in an amicable manner.
The North, which has dragged its heels in the six-way talks, has also said it can scrap nuclear weapons when it feels Washington has dropped its "hostile policy" toward it.
North Korea has "weaponized" enough declared plutonium stocks to produce four to five nuclear weapons, a U.S. expert said last week after returning from talks with officials in Pyongyang.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Robert Wood called Kim's reported comments a "good thing," but said North Korea had already agreed more than three years ago to abandon its nuclear programs.
"If you go back to September 2005, the North Koreans agreed to take a number of steps toward denuclearization of the Korea peninsula, so we hope to see the North adhere to what it agreed to," he told a news conference.
Wood said the Obama administration was still reviewing its policies toward North Korea but quoted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as saying in her confirmation hearing last week that the six-party process had merit. He said the review itself did not necessarily preclude U.S. contacts with North Korea.
TOUGH RHETORIC ALSO
Kim's reported comments -- which were not carried by North Korean media -- were a sharp contrast to the tough rhetoric its state media has fired off at South Korea and its president, who has taken a tough line toward Pyongyang. Continued...
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