DPRK urges US to rebuild "groundwork" for six-party talks

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Tuesday urged the United States to rebuild the "groundwork" for another round of six-party talks.

"The DPRK intends to follow with patience the course of policy-shaping by the second-term of the Bush administration. It is useless to hold talks, even a hundred times, without producing any substantial results," the leading newspaper Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary.

The paper accused the United States of misleading public opinion by showing its interests in the resumption of the talks and a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue but at the same time remaining indifferent to the restoration of the "groundwork" it destroyed.

It reiterated that the DPRK's stance of seeking a negotiated settlement of the nuclear issue remains unchanged.

"Our stance is to speed up the process of the six-party talks so as to help realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," the paper said.

The DPRK, the United States, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and China have met for three rounds of talks. A fourth round, originally scheduled for September, was not materialized.

Officials of the DPRK and the United States met in New York late last month on the resumption of the talks. But the paper said during the contact the United States was just trying to make the talks as a lever to force the DPRK to renounce all its nuclear programs including peaceful nuclear development, and showing no willingness to make a switchover in its hostile policy toward the DPRK.

"If the United States persist in this wrong stance, it would be hard to resume the talks," it said. "The United States should take a confidence-building attitude to making a policy switchover, which is the key to the settlement of the nuclear issue."

Source: Xinhua