Bush's security offer not worth consideration: DPRK

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Bush's security offer not worth consideration: DPRK

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The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said late on Tuesday that an offer by US President George W. Bush to provide multilateral security guarantees in exchange for Pyongyang ending its nuclear program was not worth considering.

The statement came in a commentary broadcasted by the DPRK's official radio and quoted by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

The commentary reaffirmed the DPRK's demand that the United States drop its hostile policy towards the DPRK and the two countries sign a bilateral non-aggression treaty as the only peaceful way out of the nuclear crisis.

"We have demanded the withdrawal of the US hostile policy toward the DPRK and the conclusion of a non-aggression treaty, butwe have not asked for anything like a written guarantee for security," it said.

"It is really a laughable thing, which is not even worthy of consideration that the United States may give us the so-called security guarantee within a multilateral framework on condition that we abandon nuclear deterrence.

"The reason that the United States is bragging about this security guarantee within a multilateral framework is that it is aiming to mislead the fair world opinion that calls on the United States to shift away from its hostile policy toward the DPRK and to sign a non-aggression treaty.

"If the United States is sincere in its wish to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully and to resume the six-way talks, it must drop its hostile policy toward the DPRK and express its wish to sign a non-aggression treaty," Yonhap quoted the radio commentary as saying.

In his talks with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on Mondayin Bangkok, Bush reportedly rejected Pyongyang's demand for a non-aggression treaty, but for the first time expressed willingness tooffer some form of written security guarantee backed by its partners in the six-party talks aimed at ending the nuclear standoff in the Korean peninsula.

In the following joint press release about the US-South Korean summit, the US president officially pledged to offer the DPRK a security guarantee, the first such written commitment by a US president.

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