By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter


U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, right, and U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Christopher Hill, standing, talk with South Korean university students at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, Tuesday.
/ Yonhap


South Korea and the United States agreed to push for an early resumption of negotiations to end the North Korean nuclear crisis as soon as the U.S. presidential election comes to a close, top diplomats of the two nations said Tuesday.

``We agreed to continue devoting maximum efforts to achieve this goal through multilateral diplomacy and the six-party talks,’’ U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a joint press conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.

He said during his 40-minute meeting with Ban, Seoul and Washington reconfirmed their commitment to a ``peaceful, denuclearized Korean Peninsula.’’

Powell came to Seoul Monday afternoon on the last leg of an Asian trip, where he also discussed with Japanese and Chinese officials various regional issues including ways to revive the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Before having talks with Ban, he paid a courtesy call to President Roh Moo-hyun and held talks with Unification Minister Chung Dong-young.

While meeting Chung, Powell also agreed the recently revealed nuclear experiments in South Korea in the past were matters of ``minor concern’’ and should not be compared with the nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran.

``There is no comparison between the South Korean experiments and nuclear weapons programs in North Korea and Iran,’’ Powell was quoted as saying by Chung’s spokesman. ``A U.N. Security Council action would make South Koreans uncomfortable.’’

North Korea has demanded the South’s past nuclear activities should be brought onto the negotiation table in the six-party talks, initially designed for handling its own nuclear programs, while accusing the U.S. of applying ``double standards.’’

There have been three rounds of six-party talks so far, in which Seoul, Washington, Tokyo, Russia and Beijing have tried to persuade Pyongyang into giving up its atomic weapons program.

But Pyongyang refused to attend a fourth talk in September citing the U.S. ``hostile’’ policy toward it. Experts say the communist regime sees no point in talking before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 2.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has criticized President George W. Bush for failing to stop North Korea’s arms programs, while suggesting more active direct talks with the North within the six-party framework.

Experts believe North Korea has already extracted enough plutonium for six or seven atomic bombs, though this is difficult to verify as Pyongyang will not submit to inspections from the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Just before leaving for his country, Powell had a rare meeting with a group of 30 university students at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, where the senior U.S. official explained his country’s foreign policy to the young people of South Korea.

jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr