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Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday called "a positive message" North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's remarks that his country will return to six-party talks on its nuclear program "if the conditions are mature."
"While the North Korean Foreign Ministry's Feb. 10 statement focused on not attending the talks, the remarks this time around appear to focus on attending them - though conditions are attached," Ban told the National Assembly's Unification, Foreign Affairs and Commerce Committee.
Kim's remarks earlier on the same day "are not much different from what they have been saying, and nothing is new," Ban said, adding, "North Korea will eventually come to the negotiation table."
U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Christopher Hill, who heads the American delegation to the talks, said he hoped North Korea "will realize that its future hinges on the six-party talks... Nuclear weapons cannot offer North Korea any hope or future." In a seminar sponsored by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies' Alumni Association, Hill said the talks were a road Pyongyang had to take if it wanted to rejoin the international community. Kim Jong-il "must come to dialogue," he said.
Meanwhile, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda described Kim's statement as a "natural outcome" and urged Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks unconditionally and soon. Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura commented, "Though we cannot understand why they issued the unreasonable statement that they are boycotting the six-way talks, we nonetheless welcome the remarks."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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