North Korea will stay away from international nuclear disarmament talks, Russia's foreign minister said on Friday after visiting the secretive state and pressing Pyongyang to return to the sputtering discussions. North Korea, which raised regional tensions with a defiant rocket launch earlier this month widely seen as a disguised test of a long-range missile, can send satellites into orbit on Russian rockets, Sergei Lavrov said after leaving North Korea.
North Korea responded to UN punishment for the launch by saying it would boycott the nuclear talks with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States as well as restart its plant that makes arms-grade plutonium that was being taken apart under the deal.
"North Korea at this point does not intend to return to the six-party talks," Lavrov told reporters in Seoul through a translator. Lavrov, the first high-level envoy from a global power to visit the reclusive North since after the launch, and South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan agreed to work together to have North Korea return to the nuclear talks, Yu said at the joint news conference. Prickly North Korea, arguing it has the right to have a peaceful space programme, said it sent a satellite into orbit in the April 5 launch that is now playing revolutionary songs as it circles the earth.
US and South Korean officials said nothing was sent into space during the test-flight of the North's Taepodong-2 missile, with all parts of the rocket splashing down in the sea. Russia is willing to send the North's satellites into space in line with a similar co-operation deal it has with the South, Lavrov was quoted as saying by Russia's Interfax news agency.
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