U.S. willing to normalize ties with denuclearized N. Korea: Clinton

By Lee Chi-dong

PHUKET, Thailand, July 22 (Yonhap) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday her government is willing to normalize diplomatic relations with North Korea if the communist nation scraps its nuclear arsenal in a "complete and irreversible" way.

"We have made it very clear to the North Koreans that if they will agree to
irreversible denuclearization, the United States, as well as our partners, will
move forward on a package of incentives and opportunities including normalizing
relations," she said in a press conference after a series of meetings with
Chinese, Russian, Japanese, and South Korean foreign ministers on this Thai
resort island.
Top diplomats from 10 Southeast Asian countries and more than a dozen other
members of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) will attend the meeting that opens
Thursday.
Clinton's comments marked her clearest message yet to North Korea on what it will
gain from a strategic decision to denuclearize and what it will lose in case of
continued defiance.
Clinton said she and the foreign ministers from the four regional powers
discussed "the need for vigorous, unified, and transparent implementation of the
U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874," which imposes a set of trade embargoes
and financial sanctions on Pyongyang for its nuclear test in May.
"We share a common goal of ending the nuclear weapons program in North Korea so
that we can have a denuclearized peninsula," she said, adding that "complete and
irreversible denuclearization is the only viable path for North Korea."
"It's tragic to look at what happens to the people of North Korea," she said,
citing poverty, hunger, and the absence of opportunities. "We are very clear that
are we willing to discuss the future of North Korea, but only if they agree to
the denuclearization."
"The path is open to them, and it is up to them to follow it. Unless and until
they do, they will face international isolation and the unrelenting pressure of
global sanctions," she said.
Clinton emphasized that Washington will not reward North Korea just for returning
to the table. "Nor do we intend to reward them for actions they have already
committed to taking and then reneged on," she said.
The North has repeatedly taken provocative steps after receiving economic and
political rewards for individual steps toward denuclearization, including the
disabling of its main plutonium-producing reactor in Yongbyon. The North
announced after a long-range rocket launch in April that it will restart the
reactor and abandon the six-way disarmament talks.
"We want verifiable and irreversible steps taken," she said. In her 25-minute
talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, meanwhile, the secretary
expressed hopes for the safe and early return of their nationals detained in
North Korea during the talks, according to Yu's aides.
Yu first raised the issue of the South Korean worker taken into custody at the
joint industrial park in Kaesong, according to ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young.
He has been detained in North Korea incommunicado since being arrested in late
March on charges of criticizing the North's political system and trying to lure a
North Korean female worker to defect to the South.
Washington is also trying to win the release of two American journalists detained
in the secretive North.
Laura Ling and Euna Lee of the U.S. Internet news outlet Current TV were arrested
in mid-March near the China-North Korea border while reporting on North Korean
defectors. They were convicted of unspecified "great crimes" and sentenced to 12
years of hard labor.
Yu and Clinton agreed that the humanitarian issue should be handled separately
from the nuclear issue, Moon said.
A delegation of five North Korean officials is also on a trip here to attend the
ARF. The North has not dispatched its foreign minister, however, dashing hopes of
a high-level meeting between Pyongyang and Washington.