North Korea Committed to Nuke Disarmament: Kim
A year after giving up talks on atomic arsenal, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has said that his country is committed to nuclear disarmament, reported AFP quoting Pyongyang’s official media.
In the course of a visit to Beijing this week, Kim also said that that North Korea’s ties with China would remain unchanged by the ‘replacement of one generation by a new one’.
There have been reports that he is paving the way for his son to take control of the isolated communist state.
Last year, Northe Korea conducted two atomic tests and bolted from six-nation talks.
However, on Saturday, Kim ‘expressed the DPRK’s (North Korea’s) willingness to provide favourable conditions for the resumption of the six-party (disarmament) talks’, report said.
He was quoted as saying, “The North remains unchanged in its basic stand to preserve the aim of denuclearising the Korean peninsula, implement the joint statement adopted at the six-party talks and pursue a peaceful solution through dialogue.”
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) carried these comments along with the first North Korean confirmation of a secretive five-day trip to China and echoed statements reported by official Beijing media on Friday.
“Both sides decided to make joint efforts to attain the objective of denuclearising the peninsula in accordance with the stand clarified in the September 19 joint statement,” KCNA said, referring to a 2005 agreement under which North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear programme in return for badly needed aid and security guarantees.
