NKorea next steps to test 'strategic choice': Rice

Washington, June 19: North Korea's invitation to UN nuclear inspectors to return to work there is ''indeed a good step,'' but Pyongyang's intention to disarm will be shown by future actions, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today.

Rice told a news conference that the United States expected North Korea to carry out its obligations under a February 13 deal under which it agreed to scrap its nuclear program in exchange for energy aid and diplomatic recognition by Western powers.

''The obligations that they have undertaken are clearly obligations that would, if they're carried out, mean that they've taken a strategic choice to shut down this programme,'' she said.

US officials have long urged isolated and impoverished North Korea to make the ''strategic choice'' of giving up its nuclear arms for better economic and political relations with the outside world.

However, skeptics say Pyongyang's checkered record in honoring past diplomatic deals and a long delay in implementing the February 13 pact stemming from a dispute over frozen North Korean funds raise doubts about the North's willingness to disarm.

North Korea, which conducted its first nuclear weapons test in October, plans to seal its nuclear reactor -- the source of weapons-grade plutonium -- in the second half of July, Russia's Interax news agency quotes an unidentified North Korean diplomatic source as saying today.

Rice, an avid fan of US football, recalled that she unveiled the February agreement with a sports metaphor, saying nuclear diplomacy was in the ''first quarter''.

Today she said: ''We're still there.'' But Rice said that North Korea's disarmament pledges were made not only to the United States but to China, Japan, Russia and South Korea -- the other members of the six-party nuclear talks process.

''They're on record, and they're not on record just with us.

They're on record with the entire region,'' she said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, today said a senior delegation would visit the North next week to agree on details for a return of its inspectors to monitor Pyongyang's promised nuclear shutdown.

Reuters

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