hankyoreh

spokesperson of the US State Department

The US State Department said on July 21 that it does not recognize North Korea as a nuclear state and that the country’s entire nuclear program should be a focus of negotiations.

The statement at a daily press briefing by spokesperson John Kirby came in response to a commentary the same day by the North Korean Foreign Ministry stating that North Korea was a full-fledged nuclear power and would not abandon its nuclear weapons.

“[W]e acknowledge their continued pursuits in that regard [acknowledgment as a nuclear state] and continue to warn about the threats and the dangers that those pursuits cause to the Korean Peninsula,” Kirby said when asked whether he thought the US acknowledged North Korea as a nuclear state.

When asked to clarify whether this meant the US did not recognize North Korea as a nuclear state, Kirby replied that it “acknowledg[es] the fact that” North Korea is pursuing such recognition.

“I did not mean to say that we were accepting it,” he added.

On the possibility of dialogue with Pyongyang, Kirby affirmed that Washington was “open to dialogue with the North that would lead to authentic and credible negotiations that get at the entirety of the North’s nuclear program and result in . . . concrete and irreversible steps towards denuclearization.”

Kirby dismissed questions about US plans for bilateral talks with North Korea.

“There’s no such plans,” he stated.

“We have long said that resumption of the six-party talks we would support, but the onus is on North Korea,” he added.

Previously that day, a spokesperson for the North Korean Foreign Ministry said the US was “hassling over our nuclear issue after its agreement was reached on the Iranian nuclear issue.”

“We are not the slightest bit interested in taking the first steps toward dialogue to discuss freezing or abandoning our nuclear program,” the spokesperson said.

By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

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