Clinton calls for patience in N. Korean denuclearization

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, July 15 (Yonhap) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday
called for patience in pursuing North Korea's denuclearization amid escalating
tensions on the Korean Peninsula after the North's nuclear and missile tests.
Speaking to a forum ahead of her trip to Thailand and India next week, Clinton
emphasized the need to develop "a tougher joint effort toward the complete and
verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula."
"Cultivating these partnerships and their full range takes time and patience; it
also takes persistence," she said.
Clinton's remarks came hours after North Korea's ceremonial head of state, Kim
Yong-nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, told the
Non-Aligned Movement summit in Sharim El-Sheik, Egypt, that the six-party talks
on ending Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions "came to a permanent end because the U.S.
and the majority of the obedient parties to the talks abandoned this principle"
of "respect for sovereign rights and equality."
hdh@yna.co.kr
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