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North Korea willing to consider Bush offer

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE Oct. 25. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) today cautiously expressed its willingness to consider the U.S. President, George W. Bush's recent offer to address Pyongyang's security concerns through some form of `assurances' under the auspices of the six-party talks.

These talks, which are now sought to be revived, were held in Beijing last August. The participants were the U.S., DPRK, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

The U.S. offer, which North Korea has now reacted to, was made by Mr. Bush during his conversation with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, on October 19, on the sidelines of the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Bangkok. While Mr. Bush had spoken of "security assurances within a six-party context'', the offer has been widely interpreted to mean a security guarantee of some kind or other.

Monitored in Seoul, a traditional "listening post'' in relation to the DPRK, a Foreign Ministry official in Pyongyang told the State-run Korean Central News Agency that Mr. Bush's offer could be considered under certain circumstances.

The North Korean official said: "We are ready to consider (Mr.) Bush's remarks on the `written assurances of non-aggression' if they are based on the (U.S.) intention to co-exist with the DPRK and (if they are) aimed to play a positive role in realising the proposal for a package solution on the principle of simultaneous actions''.

The latest move by the DPRK authorities is based on their perception of Mr. Bush's offer as interpreted in the regional diplomatic circles.

Mr. Bush had said, after meeting Mr. Hu in Bangkok on October 19, that they "talked about how to advance the Beijing talks.... to achieving a mutual goal, which is a (nuclear) weapons-free (Korean) peninsula''.

They also talked about "addressing the security concerns of North Korea within the context of the six-party talks''. Later, a senior U.S. administration official annotated the offer to mean "security assurances'' within the six-party context. Any moves on the part of the U.S. itself "would be conditioned on verifiable progress on their (North Korean) part'' in regard to Pyongyang's dismantling of its nuclear-weapons programme.

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