Seoul: As Jimmy Carter prepared to leave
North Korea on Thursday, a meeting with leader Kim Jong Il still
uncertain, the former American president said Pyongyang has
demanded US security guarantees in return for abandoning its
nuclear weapons programmes.
Carter said that throughout his three-day trip he and
three former European leaders had heard that North Korea wants
to improve relations with the United States and is willing to
talk with Washington and Seoul without preconditions.
"The sticking point and it`s a big one is that they
won`t give up their nuclear program without some kind of
security guarantee from the US," he wrote in an online message
posted last night.
That`s an apparent reference to North Korea`s claim
that its atomic weapons programs deter the United States and
South Korea from staging a northward invasion that would allow
Seoul to rule the entire Korean peninsula.
Carter is well-respected in North Korea for his role
in helping work out a 1994 nuclear deal that may have averted
a war. But officials in Seoul and Washington have so far put
little stock in his ability to engineer a breakthrough in
long-stalled, acrimonious nuclear negotiations.
Han Sung-joo, South Korea`s foreign minister during
Carter`s 1994 trip, said in an interview that "both South
Korea and the government are a little bit wary of Mr.
Carter trying to represent North Korea in a better light than
it actually is."
Despite widespread scepticism, however, interest was
still high in whether the Nobel Peace laureate might thaw ties
between North Korea and the outside world.
Carter and the former leaders of Finland, Norway and
Ireland were hoping for talks with Kim Jong Il and his son and
heir apparent, Kim Jong Un. They met with the foreign minister
and the president of the North`s parliament, though it was
unclear today whether they would talk with the Kims.
Carter`s group is wading into a difficult situation:
It has been more than two years since nuclear negotiators from
the United States and neighbouring nations last met with the
North in an effort to persuade it to abandon its atomic
weapons programmes.
Bureau Report
