US will never have 'normal' ties with a nuclear-armed NKorea

WASHINGTON, Oct 21, 2009 (AFP) - The United States will never have "normal, sanctions-free relations" with a nuclear-armed North Korea, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Wednesday as she demanded its full atomic disarmament.

In a speech about the US quest for a nuclear-free world, Clinton tackled suspicions that North Korea intends only to use negotiations with the United States and other powers to become a recognized atomic weapons state.


The top US diplomat said President Barack Obama's administration remained open to one-on-one talks with North Korea within the context of six-party negotiations, suspended for the last six months.

North Korea, after a tense showdown marked by an underground nuclear weapons test and a series of rocket launches, has recently signaled it wants direct talks with the United States.

"But North Korea's return to the negotiating table is not enough," Clinton told a gathering of foreign policy experts organized by the United States Institute of Peace, a think tank.

"Current sanctions will not be relaxed until Pyongyang takes verifiable, irreversible steps toward complete denuclearization," Clinton said.

"Its leaders should be under no illusion that the United States will ever have normal, sanctions-free relations with a nuclear-armed North Korea," she added.

Besides the United States, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan have taken part in the six-party talks, which North Korea quit in April after the United Nations censured it for a long-range rocket launch.

Clinton also repeated that the new administration's diplomatic engagement with Iran over its disputed nuclear program cannot be "open-ended."

Along with the four other permanent members of the UN Security Council -- Russia, China, France and Britain -- plus Germany, the Obama administration opened talks with Iran October 1 in a bid to halt Tehran's uranium enrichment program.

Iran rejects Western allegations that it aims to build a nuclear bomb, saying the program is for peaceful nuclear energy.

Clinton put Tehran and Pyongyang at the heart of Obama's worldwide quest to banish atomic arms that he revealed in Prague in April.

"Thwarting the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran would shore up the non-proliferation regime."

She called for bolstering the IAEA after saying it lacked "the tools or authority to carry out its mission effectively," citing its failure to detect Iran's covert uranium enrichment plant near Qom and Syria's alleged reactor.

In 2007, Israeli warplanes bombed the alleged nuclear plant.

The IAEA should "be given new authorities, such as the ability to investigate nuclear weapons-related activities even when no nuclear materials are present," she said.

"And if we expect the IAEA to be a bulwark of the non-proliferation regime, we must also give it the resources necessary to do its job," the secretary said.

In a statement from its Washington embassy, Syria said it "is a signatory to the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) and has abided by all its obligations under this treaty, regardless of the false accusations leveled by some circles."

Damascus urged the new administration to adopt a Syrian-sponsored UN resolution declaring the entire Middle East a region free of weapons of mass destruction, as well as to press US ally Israel to sign the NPT.

Clinton also said US negotiations with Russia for a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) would enhance not only world security but US security.

The treaty, seen as a cornerstone of Cold War-era strategic arms control, expires December 5.

There was little progress toward a new deal that would strictly limit US and Russian arsenals under former US president George W. Bush.

The chief US diplomat also renewed the administration's commitment to obtain Congressional ratification of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Six countries -- the United States, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, China and Egypt -- have signed but not ratified the pact.

North Korea, India and Pakistan have not signed it and all three have carried out nuclear tests since 1996.


by Lachlan Carmichael
(c) 2009 AFP