North Korea nuclear deal rejected
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A satellite image of a suspected nuclear facility in North Korea.
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WASHINGTON -- U.S. President George W. Bush has rejected a conditional offer by North Korea to freeze its nuclear weapons program.
On Tuesday, Pyongyang said it would freeze its program in return for Washington providing energy aid and removing it from a list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
But Bush, speaking at a brief news conference with Premier Wen Jiabao from China, responded by saying Pyongyang must dismantle its program.
"The goal of the United States is not for a freeze of the nuclear program," Bush said.
"The goal is to dismantle a nuclear weapons program in a verifiable and irreversible way."
"That," he said, "is the clear message we are sending to the North Koreans."
The North Korean response came one day after the United States, Japan and South Korea offered a proposal for ending the nuclear standoff on the peninsula.
Bush's statement, and similar remarks by White House and State Department spokesmen, appeared part of jockeying for position in advance of another round of talks with North Korea.
The talks, to include the United States, South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and North Korea, will likely happen in January, although U.S. officials have said they are ready to hold them as early as next week.
But Wen indicated to Bush Tuesday it was too early to call a second round of talks, according to a U.S. official, as differences among the parties had not yet narrowed sufficiently.
"They (the Chinese) indicated that they felt there was a developing consensus on this issue but that we had not yet reached the point where a new round, a second round, of six-party multilateral talks could be convened," the official told reporters
North Korea's resumption of its nuclear program has set its neighbors and Washington on edge, and efforts to find a diplomatic solution remain locked in a stalemate.
The impoverished North has often tried to use the nuclear confrontation as a means to win economic aid and diplomatic recognition.
Bush said the United States would keep working with China and the other countries in the six-party talks "to resolve this issue peacefully."
Participants in the six-way talks have been trying for weeks to jump-start a second round of negotiations.
The first round ended without much progress, and participants had hoped for a new meeting in mid-December.
North Korea's inclusion on the U.S. terrorism list effectively blocks it from getting any development funds from the World Bank and other international lending organizations.
It has been on the list since 1988 because of its alleged involvement in the bombing of a South Korean airliner in the skies near Myanmar in 1987. All 115 people aboard the Korean Air flight died.
Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
