N Korea not afraid of war after impasse
Foreign Desk Report

SEOUL—North Korea’s official media blamed the United States on Saturday for an impasse in talks aimed at ending Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program and said it was not afraid of war. Five days of talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States ended on Friday with the envoys failing even to agree a date for the next round.
The U.N. imposed sanctions on North Korea after it conducted its first nuclear test in October but North Korean officials had focused at the talks on trying to get separate U.S. financial curbs lifted, envoys said. North Korean delegate Kim Kye-gwan said Pyongyang had rejected pressure from the United States to end its nuclear program and accept inspections of its nuclear facilities. “We decisively opposed this and told the U.S. side to further study our proposal,” Kim was quoted as saying. In a separate official report, North Korea said: “Sanctions and pressure will never work on the DPRK (North Korea).”
“The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK want peace but they are not afraid of war. They will never allow anyone to infringe upon the sovereignty and dignity of their country even a bit,” the report on its KCNA news agency said. In September 2005, North Korea said in principle it would give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for aid and security guarantees. North Korean accounts at Macau’s Banco Delta Asia were frozen after the U.S. Treasury designated the bank as a “primary money-laundering concern,” also in September 2005. North Korea said the curbs showed Washington had negotiated in bad faith. Washington maintains the nuclear talks and the financial crackdown are separate issues and should not be confused. The crackdown, which froze just $24 million in funds, had wide implications for North Korea because it has scared other international banks away from doing business with Pyongyang.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun appeared to sympathize with the North Koreans’ position, asking this week why the U.S. Treasury would act just days before the nuclear deal was struck. “If one wants to look at it in a bad light, one may say it was all coordinated between the two (the U.S. State and Treasury Departments),” Roh said in a speech. South Korea’s envoy said he wanted to see the six-party talks continue because they contributed to peace in the region, Yonhap news agency reported on Saturday.
The mainstream South Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo cautioned Pyongyang against dragging its heels. “If North Korea holds its ground obstinately, it will only face more serious isolation and pain,” it said in an editorial.
China, which has hosted the talks since 2003, counseled more flexibility in the negotiations and avoided placing blame on either Washington or Pyongyang for this week’s failure. The overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the voice of the ruling Communist Party, said the contending sides needed to continue talking and “make necessary compromises”.
The chance of a breakthrough in talks on North Korea’s nuclear program remain as remote as ever, analysts say, as negotiators left Beijing empty-handed after the discussions ended in deadlock. The six-party negotiations, which resumed Monday after a break of 13 months and Pyongyang’s first ever atom bomb test in October, broke up on Friday, with envoys failing to persuade the reclusive state to give up its nuclear weapons.
The talks snagged on North Korea’s refusal to launch substantive discussions until the United States lifted financial sanctions imposed last year which have left millions of dollars of North Korean funds in limbo in a Macau bank. Analysts say the failure of the talks — involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States — was no surprise as the gap between the aims of Washington and Pyongyang was simply too wide to bridge. “North Korea has only been interested in the lifting of sanctions while the US expects to discuss the nuclear issue,” said Nam Sung-Wook Saturday, an expert on North Korea affairs at Korea University in Seoul. “They have different dreams on the same bed... it was a destined course so it’s no surprise.” North Korea’s chief negotiator Kim Kye-Gwan blamed the failure of the talks on Washington’s “hostile” policy toward Pyongyang, while chief US envoy Christopher Hill said Kim did not have the authority needed to negotiate.