Date:   3/27/2003 9:02:07 AM ( 22 y ago)
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URL:   https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=451092

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Why does anyone support Bu$h's ridiculous war plans? He has stirred up a hornet's nest in the Middle East. He has caused severe instability in the world. He needs to be impeached NOW!

Later may be too late for everyone.


WRAPUP 4-N.Korea quits border talks, boosts military spending

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(By Martin Nesirky

SEOUL, March 26 (Reuters) - North Korea pulled out of border liaison talks with U.S. officers on Wednesday and a U.N. envoy said Pyongyang was continuing to work on a reprocessing plant at the heart of a nuclear standoff with the United States.

North Korea's parliament received a 2003 budget increasing military spending in order to put the impoverished communist state's entire population under arms, state media said.

U.S. and South Korean officials have said North Korea might try to stage an incident of some kind -- possibly a missile launch or a naval incursion -- to draw attention to itself now the spotlight is on the U.S.-led war against Iraq.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's national security adviser briefed him on an incident in which two North Korean fishing boats briefly strayed south on Tuesday, officials said.

But they played down the incident and saw no link to the Iraq war or North Korea's bid to draw the United States into direct talks about Pyongyang's suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.

U.S. President George W. Bush has said Iraq, Iran and North Korea are part of the same "axis of evil".

"I don't think it was anything serious or the North trying to provoke us," said Roh's foreign media spokeswoman, Lee Jihyun, of the boat incident.

But the North's decision to pull out of military liaison talks at the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) border between North and South Korea because of annual military exercises in the South removed one of the few conduits for contact between the sides.

The pull-out announcement from the North's KCNA news agency came as South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan was flying to Washington for talks set to be dominated by North Korea.

NEXT EYE-CATCHING MOVE?

On Wednesday, North Korea's Finance Minister Mun Il-bong presented to parliament a budget allocating 15.4 percent of this year's spending on defence, up from 14.9 percent in 2002, the official KCNA news agency said. It gave no monetary figure.

Mun's budget report vowed to "implement to the letter the (Workers' Party) policy of putting all the people under arms and turning the whole country into a fortress", KCNA said. One in 20 of the 22 million North Koreans are in the armed forces.

On Friday Japan will launch two satellites into orbit to keep a closer eye on North Korea, which fired a ballistic missile over Japan in 1998.

North Korea's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said Pyongyang would not beg Washington for bilateral talks but added: "Direct talks are the only way of settling the nuclear issue."

U.S. and South Korean officials have speculated the North might choose the next few days to test-fire one of its ballistic missiles to try to catch Washington's attention again.

The North postponed planned North-South economic talks last weekend, saying it was angry the South had raised its alert status since the Iraq war started. The South denies changing the alert level, but North Korea said it did not believe Seoul.

"The government has measures to counter any negative impact from the (Iraq) war," Roh said in a speech to army cadets. "Our military forces are also maintaining a strong defensive stance."

"MEANINGLESS TO SIT TOGETHER"

Although North Korea and the United States have no diplomatic ties and are at loggerheads over the North's suspected nuclear weapons ambitions, officers from the two sides have continued to meet regularly at Panmunjom, a neutral area inside the Demilitarised Zone that bisects the peninsula.

The U.S. officers represent the United Nations at Panmunjom.

There was no immediate U.S. reaction but U.S. military officials say colonel- and lower-level talks have been held frequently down the years even during times of heightened tension along the world's most fortified frontier.

There have been less frequent general-level talks, too.

North Korea told a U.N. special envoy last week it would continue preparations to restart its nuclear reprocessing plant until the United States agrees to talks, the envoy, Maurice Strong, told Reuters in Seoul on Wednesday.

"RESERVED THE RIGHT"

He said officials in Pyongyang told him they did not plan to build nuclear weapons, but "they will continue to take steps that they need in their economic interests and in their security interests until such time as there are serious negotiations on those issues".

Strong told Reuters Television the North Koreans he met last week were not clear about when or whether they would start reprocessing spent nuclear fuel at their Yongbyon site, but insisted they "reserved the right to do that".

Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, is where a small reactor has already been restarted. The complex houses a reprocessing plant that together with the reactor had been frozen under a now-shattered 1994 deal with the United States to halt the North's nuclear programme.

Strong said the North was concerned it might be the next U.S. target after Iraq. He said Pyongyang was reassured by Washington's verbal statements it does not intend to invade North Korea but wanted stronger proof. (Additional reporting by Choi Yoon-sang, Kim Seung-woo, Nam In-soo and Paul Eckert)



 

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