US/NORTH KOREA: President Bush said there was a "good chance" of resolving a crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions through multilateral diplomacy.
Ahead of US meetings this week with officials from China and North Korea, Mr Bush said yesterday that China, which is to host the talks, had taken on a key responsibility in helping to ensure the Korean peninsula was free of nuclear weapons, a goal supported by Japan and South Korea. "I believe that all four of us working together have a good chance of convincing North Korea to abandon her ambitions to develop nuclear arsenals," he said. Mr Bush appeared to brush aside a dispute on Friday over a North Korean statement that suggested Pyongyang had begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods which could provide materials for atomic weapons.
The statement had raised speculation the talks in Beijing could be scuppered, but US officials later said the statement appeared to have been mistranslated.
Asked about the talks, Mr Bush said: "China is assuming a very important responsibility, and that is that they will . . . work toward (ensuring) a nuclear weapons-free peninsula. And now that they are engaged in the process it makes it more likely that's going to occur," he said.
Koreans across the world should unite against US moves towards a war, North Korea's official media said yesterday, warning the nation faced "national extermination".
"All the Koreans in the North, the South and overseas should firmly unite as one to resolutely smash the US moves for a war of aggression," an editorial from the Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried on the state-run KCNA news agency said.