AFTER weeks of belligerent saber-rattling, the government in North Korea offered the U.S. and South Korea a list of conditions on Thursday for talks.
The conditions include lifting UN sanctions, signaling a possible end to weeks of warlike hostility on the Korean peninsula, a military statement said.
North Korea’s top military body also said in the statement that the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula would begin when the U.S. removed nuclear weapons that the isolated state said Washington had deployed in the region.
The move was likely `a sop’ to the North’s only major backer, China, which has signalled its growing unease over the escalation of threats, and which said later on Thursday that talks was the only correct way to end the tension.
“Dialogue and war cannot co-exist,’’ the North’s National Defence Commission said in the statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
“If the U.S. and the puppet South have the slightest desire to avoid the sledge-hammer blow of our army and the people … and truly wish dialogue and negotiations, they must make the resolute decision,’’ it said.
The U.S. has offered talks, but on the pre-condition that they lead to North Korea abandoning its nuclear weapons ambitions.
North Korea deems its nuclear arms a “treasured sword’’ and has vowed never to give them up.
Nevertheless, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who ended a trip to the region early this week that was dominated by concern about North Korea, stressed his interest in a diplomatic solution.
South Korea which is conducting military exercises with U.S. forces to the anger of North Korea, has also proposed talks, a move that Pyongyang rejected as insincere.
North Korea stepped up its defiance of UN Security Council resolutions in December when it launched a rocket that it said put a scientific satellite in orbit.
Critics say the launch is aimed at nurturing the kind of technology needed to deliver a nuclear warhead mounted on a long-range missile.
That was followed in February by its third test of a nuclear weapon, that triggered new UN sanctions in March, sharply toughening existing measures, which in turn led to a dramatic intensification of North Korean threats of nuclear strikes against South Korea and the U.S.
The North’s military commission said UN Security Council sanctions, “fabricated with unjust reasons’’ must be withdrawn.
“They should bear in mind that doing so would be a token of good will towards the DPRK,’’ it said.
The North’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“The denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula can begin with the removal of the nuclear war tools dragged in by the U.S. and it can lead to global nuclear disarmament,’’ it added.
South Korea saw the demands as “regretful’’ and “cliched’’ and it called on North Korea to withdraw them, a government official said.