By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter


Alexander Vershbow, U.S. ambassador to Seoul, Wednesday urged North Korea to return to the six-party talks, saying that the United States is ready to do so without attaching any new conditions.

They were the first remarks made publicly by the U.S. envoy this year on the stalled multilateral dialogue, in which the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan are participating.

``I sincerely hope that 2006 will be the year in which North Korea’s leaders end their country’s self-imposed isolation by getting out of the nuclear business,’’ he said in a speech at the Korean-American Association in Seoul.

Vershbow said his government is ready to fulfill its commitments under joint principle statement, adopted on Sept. 19 in Beijing, including negotiating a permanent peace regime for the Korean Peninsula and beginning the process of normalizing relations with Pyongyang.

``We are ready to follow through on our commitments if the North Koreans follow through on theirs,’’ he said.

Pyongyang pledged to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs in September in exchange for diplomatic and economic benefits and security guarantees. But it has boycotted the talks since November, saying the U.S. is trying to stifle its regime by imposing sanctions and taking issue with human rights violations.

Fully aware of this situation, Vershbow estimated that the six-party joint statement is ``just a statement of principles,’’ saying that the real test will come in the implementation phase.

As for inter-Korean relations, the ambassador said that his government supports South Korean efforts to improve the lives of North Koreans through inter-Korean engagement, as a step toward reconciliation and eventual reunification of the peninsula.

Vershbow, however, expressed his hope that Seoul and Washington can ``more effectively’’ combine efforts to promote improvements in the lives of the people of North Korea this year.

Seoul has maintained a low-key policy on North Korea’s human rights issue as a way to engage and economically cooperate with the Pyongyang regime.

In a related development, the U.S. State Department rejected a North Korean demand that Washington should first lift sanctions before discussing the resumption of the nuclear disarmament talks.

``The two issues are unrelated,’’ State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. ``I don’t see in what way they are preventing North Korea from going back to the six-party talks.’’

In November, North Korea said that U.S. sanctions were blocking any progress in the talks.

The U.S. Treasury Department told U.S. financial institutions in September to stop dealing with a bank in Macao, which it accused of being a front for North Korean counterfeiting and money laundering.

McCormack said it was a reasonable decision his country has made to protect the American currency. ``We, the United States, as well as other countries are going to take steps to stop, inhibit or prevent illicit activities,’’ he said.

In Seoul, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Ban Ki-moon said that South Korea will leave no stone unturned to resume the six-party talks as soon as possible.

``All related parties have formed a common ground that the talks should be reopened soon,’’ he told reporters at a weekly press briefing. ``It’s difficult to say when they will be resumed. But we are doing our best to make them come earlier.’’

In November, the six participating states ended the latest round talks without setting the resumption date. Seoul is pushing for the reopening of the talks in January.

im@koreatimes.co.kr