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U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has asked South Korea to suspend fertilizer aid to Pyongyang, the New York Times (NYT) reported Saturday. The request comes after North Korea announced it had nuclear weapons and was pulling out of six-party talks on its nuclear program.
The paper quoted informed officials as saying that Cheney pressed South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon when the two met in Washington on Friday not to reward North Korea with trade deals.
Cheney said if South Korea wanted to help North Korea choose between nuclear weapons and deeper isolation, it had to act in concert with other nations trying to disarm the North and refuse Pyongyang¡¯s request for several hundred thousand tons of fertilizer.
Cheney told Ban the U.S. would continue to press for resumption of the six-party talks, which North Korea has refused, and he didn¡¯t let on at all that Washington was considering military action against the North or plans to isolate Pyongyang.
However, the NYT reported some officials as saying the U.S. was considering fresh economic pressure on North Korea. One high-ranking White House official said the U.S. government could seek new ways to stop the flow of money into North Korea.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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