SKorea keeps pressing North to resume nuclear talks

SEOUL/TOKYO - South Korea pressed North Korea on Tuesday to resume talks on its nuclear programs, while China denied a report that the North wanted it to arrange a visit to Pyongyang by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Seoul's top official to the North-South talks -- the first in 10 months -- promised on Monday that South Korea would offer a new and serious proposal if Pyongyang returned to six-country talks on dismantling its nuclear arms programs.
Nearly a year after the last round of bilateral talks, concerns are rising that Pyongyang may test a nuclear device.
"On the nuclear issue, we urged, again as we did yesterday, early participation in the six-party talks," South Korea's Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo told pool reporters in the North Korean city of Kaesong, where the talks were being held.
"We had some additional exchanges of views on the nuclear problem and the dates for South-North dialogue and on family reunions, but we'll have to continue discussions," Rhee added.
Impoverished North Korea asked for food aid and fertilizer on Monday and Seoul proposed to discuss the issue further at ministerial level in June.
Rhee has declined to elaborate on what the proposal would include, but said earlier on Tuesday in Seoul that a pledge by the North to return to the six-way talks would be key to normalising brittle relations between the two Koreas.
Pyongyang declared in February that it had nuclear weapons and said this month it had extracted spent fuel from a nuclear reactor, a move that could yield more material for weapons.
North Korea abruptly agreed at the weekend to meet for the bilateral talks.
It broke off all dialogue last July in anger at Seoul's secret airlift of 468 North Korean refugees from Vietnam and its refusal to let a delegation attend a memorial in the North Korean capital.
NO ALBRIGHT REDUX?
Japanese and Chinese officials denied a report by financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun that North Korea had asked China to arrange for Rice to visit Pyongyang.
The newspaper, quoting unidentified diplomatic sources, said North Korea's proposal was conveyed to Rice by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing during a telephone conversation on May 13.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda told a news conference in Tokyo that the State Department had denied the report and reiterated that Japan favored the six-party process.
Asked whether Rice might imitate her predecessor, Madeleine Albright, who visited North Korea as secretary of state in October 2000, Hosoda said: "It's hypothetical ... But Rice is the busiest person in the world, so I don't know if she would consider such a thing."
The United States has repeatedly rejected the idea of holding bilateral talks with Pyongyang outside the six-party framework.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a news conference the report was "imaginative, but not factual."
South Korean Foreign Ministry officials were similarly dismissive. "It would seem a little far-fetched to say Rice would visit Pyongyang at this point," one of the officials said.
Some analysts, though, said pressure was mounting from other participants for Washington to open some form of dialogue.
"The United States maintains that bilateral talks are unpalatable, but the North has rejected six-party talks for so long that the other members, except Japan, think bilateral talks should be held," said Shunji Hiraiwa, a Korea expert at Japan's Shizuoka Prefectural University.
"Even in Japan, some people are starting to think that is necessary," he added.
President Bush's administration warned North Korea on Sunday that conducting a nuclear test would be a serious act of "defiance" and would force Washington and its regional partners to consider new punitive steps against Pyongyang.
U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley told CNN that Japan had concluded those measures should include taking the matter to the U.N. Security Council and possibly sanctions.
Three rounds of talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program have taken place among the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, the last in June 2004.
North Korea's state-run media, meanwhile, kept up a barrage of anti-U.S. rhetoric.
"Up till now, the Bush administration regarded the six-party talks as a leverage to gain time for the completion of preparations for the second Korean War," the Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried by the official KCNA news agency.
"Our nuclear weapons are a reliable shield to defend the country's sovereignty and peace and a guarantee for victory," the newspaper added.