The Democratic People's Republicof Korea (DPRK) on Thursday accused the United States of setting preconditions for a resumption of bilateral talks and urged Washington to withdraw its hostile policy toward the country.
"If dialogue is to be resumed and make progress under the situation where there is no foundation for dialogue between the DPRK and the U.S. owing to the hostile policy of the Bush administration, the U.S. should totally give up its hostile policytowards us before anything else," a DPRK foreign ministry spokesman said.
The spokesman was responding to the recent remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
Powell said on Tuesday that the progress of the U.S.-DPRK dialogue totally depended on the attitude of the DPRK towards suchissues as stopping nuclear proliferation, eliminating long-range missiles, reducing conventional armed forces and full compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The spokesman said Washington had proposed on several occasionsto the DPRK to restart dialogue without preconditions and dispatchits special envoy Jack Pritchard to Pyongyang, but it had not lived up to its word and delayed the proposed visit.
(Xinhua News Agency June 14, 2002)
