NKorea press suggests US signing peace treaty replacing armistice.

PYONGYANG, April 20 (Itar-Tass) - The North Korean newspaper Minju
Chosun suggested on Tuesday that the United States should sign a bilateral peace treaty.

In the newspaper's opinion, the present armistice agreement, "a
product of the cold war era, continuing for several decades", puts into
jeopardy, as before, peace and security in the Korean Peninsula.
The newspaper warns that an armed conflict in this region "is capable
of kindling a world nuclear war". Therefore, the newspaper continues,
detente in the Korean Peninsula would be "not only a regional, but also an
important international issue whose solution will help save Asia and other
areas of the world from the nuclear threat".
In the newspaper's opinion, the signing of a peace treaty between
North Korea and the US will help to create "an atmosphere of trust between
the two states, will ease the military confrontation in the Korean
Peninsula and will create a favourable situation in the entire
Asia-Pacific region".
Minju Chosun reckons that "Washington should quickly respond to North
Korea's proposal on concluding a peace treaty if the US wants to achieve,
in actual fact, reconciliation, peace and security in the Korean Peninsula.
The leading North Korean party newspaper Rodong Shinmun also voiced
support for " establishing relations of trust between the people's
republic and the US in the interests of resuming the process of
denuclearising the Korean Peninsula". The newspaper claims that for this
purpose, the two countries "should sign, above all, a peace treaty".
Incidentally, in the newspaper's opinion, a peace agreement between
North Korea and the US "should have been concluded much earlier". If a
structure of stable peace had taken firm root in the Korean Peninsula in
the past, "the nuclear question would not popped up", Rodong Shinmun
writes.
Back last January, the North Korean Foreign Ministry suggested
starting talks with the US on concluding a peace treaty which would
formally put an end to the 1950-1953 Korean War. A statement by the North
Korean ministry noted that the signing of such a document would help "to
remove hostile relations" between the two countries and "to advance at a
quick pace to denuclearising the Korean Peninsula".
-0-bur/gor