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The U.S. is not making a one-sided request for nuclear disarmament from North Korea but is ready to match the Stalinist country ¡°word for word and action for action,¡± its special envoy for the six-party talks, Joseph DeTrani, said Wednesday.
DeTrani¡¯s remarks during a seminar at the neo-liberal Cato Institute think tank struck a conciliatory note ahead of the resumption of the six-nation talks in a few days¡¯ time. He said ¡°nobody¡± was asking North Korea to give up all its nuclear programs before the U.S. gives it anything -- a reference to remarks by a North Korean UN diplomat that his country will dismantle nothing until the U.S. builds it a civilian light-water reactor. In a barbed aside, DeTrani said Washington had by contrast so far made no unilateral statements telling North Korea what to do.
But DeTrani said North Korea, too, looked ready for the next step, considering its promise to come to the six-party talks with no strings attached and the results of Chinese President Hu Jintao¡¯s visit to the North.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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