Bush Hails Agreement on Bringing North Korea Back to Talks on Nuclear Program

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Tuesday welcomed an agreement to bring North Korea back to six-party arms talks and said the United States will insist the communist regime abandon its nuclear weapons program in a verifiable fashion.

To lure the North back, Washington agreed to discuss the financial sanctions America imposed on North Korea a year ago for its alleged complicity in counterfeiting and money laundering to sell weapons of mass destruction.

Those sanctions attempted to sever Pyongyang from the international financial system.

North Korea has boycotted the six-party talks since the sanctions were imposed.

Mr. Bush credited China, which has more leverage than any other country with North Korea, with bringing the North back to negotiations.

"I am pleased and I want to thank the Chinese," the president told reporters in the Oval Office, after meeting with Andrew Natsios, his special envoy on Sudan.

"It's clear the North Koreans got the message from the Chinese and everybody else," said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.

The surprise announcement came three weeks after the communist regime in Pyongyang conducted its first-known test detonation of a nuclear bomb. The agreement was struck after three-way discussions hosted by the Chinese in Beijing between the senior envoys from America, China and North Korea.

The American negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, said the talks, which also include Japan, South Korea and Russia, could resume as early as November or December.

Mr. Bush said the agreement does not halt America's effort to enforce a U.N. Security Council resolution passed in response to the North's atomic test.

That resolution calls for a ban on the sale of major arms to Pyongyang and inspection of cargo entering and leaving the country. It also calls for the freezing of assets of businesses supplying North Korea's nuclear and ballistic weapons programs, as well as restrictions on sales of luxury goods and travel bans on North Korean officials.

"We'll be sending teams to the region to work with our partners to make sure that the current United Nations Security Council resolution is enforced, but also to make sure the talks are effective, that we achieve the results we want - which is a North Korea that abandons her nuclear weapons programs and her nuclear weapons in a verifiable fashion in return for a better way forward for her people," the president said. "I'm very pleased with the progress being made in the Far East. Still got a lot of work to do."

The top Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, Rep. Tom Lantos of California, hailed the announcement but said the Mr. Bush administration should enter renewed talks ready to bargain.

"It is now incumbent upon all involved, including the administration, to return to these talks with maximum flexibility and creativity," Mr. Hill said in a written statement.

Mr. Casey said America would enter the new round of talks insisting they start with a September 2005 agreement forged between the six nations, in which Pyongyang pledged to scrap its nuclear programs in return for aid and security assurances.

That accord ultimately produced no progress because of a dispute over timing, with the North insisting on the aid before it halted its nuclear work and America refusing to do so.

"The United States' intention is to start with the Sept. 19 agreement and not allow the North Koreans to walk it back any further," Mr. Casey said. "It isn't 'we throw out the Sept. 19 agreement and start over.'"