Condoleezza Rice hints at flexibility on NKorea

Washington, Dec 16: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has hinted at flexibility in next week's six-country talks with North Korea, saying the negotiations are part of a process and cannot be judged by one session.

Rice also told Reuters in an interview yesterday that she had no indication Pyongyang might be planning another nuclear weapons test during the six-country talks, as South Korea's defense minister said earlier in the day.

And she insisted that UN sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for an October. 9 nuclear weapons test will continue to be enforced even if the six-country talks in Beijing show progress, which US officials are hoping for but is not guaranteed.

''This is going to be a process and so I don't think we ought to try and judge the first step on its own merits but rather look at it as a part of a set of steps that we're going to take toward denuclearization,'' she said.

But Rice hinted at flexibility on resolving a dispute over what the United States says is Pyongyang's counterfeiting and money laundering activities, which has led to North Korean accounts at the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia being frozen.

Asked about the possibility of US flexibility on this topic, she said: ''We're not going to allow them to continue to violate our laws but obviously we'll look at the totality of all of this and see where we are after the next couple of rounds'' of talks.

REUTERS

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