South Korea on Friday played down concerns about North Korea's suspected nuclear proliferation, saying six-party disarmament talks were already addressing the issue. Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon told reporters the South Korean government was "paying heed" to US President George W. Bush's concerns about arms proliferation by the North.
But Song said the issue already fell within the domain of the six-party process. "Nuclear non-proliferation is a comprehensive concept that includes the reporting, disabling and dismantling (of all nuclear facilities)," he said.
At six-party talks, which will next take place from September 27 to 30 in Beijing, countries involved will try to draft plans for disabling the North's nuclear facilities and agree on the next step for "denuclearisation such as reporting of nuclear programmes," Song said.
"If disablement is completed by the end of this year, we will be able to move forward to the next stage, that is dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear programmes," he added. Song's comments came on the day that North Korea and Syria held high-level talks, according to state media in Pyongyang, following reports the communist state was secretly helping Damascus to develop a nuclear weapons facility.
Both sides "exchanged views on the issue of boosting the friendly and co-operative ties between the two parties and a series of issues of bilateral interest," the official Korean Central News Agency said.
Also Friday, a report from South Korea's Yonhap news agency said North Korea has trained Syrian missile engineers and the Arab nation has bartered farm products and computers for missiles from the Stalinist state.
President Bush overnight warned the North against supplying nuclear know-how to Syria, saying the six-party talks could only succeed if it met all its pledges. "We expect them to honour their commitment to give up weapons and weapons programmes and to the extent that they are proliferating, we expect them to stop their proliferation," Bush said.
He also warned against states sharing "information and/or materials" linked to nuclear weapons. In a landmark six-nation deal brokered in February, North Korea agreed to dismantle all its nuclear facilities and programmes in exchange for diplomatic concessions, energy and other aid.
But the next round of talks on the deal, due on Wednesday, were suddenly postponed amid the reports that Pyongyang was secretly helping Damascus develop nuclear weapons - something North Korea denies.
The International Atomic Energy Agency adopted a resolution Thursday urging North Korea to take further steps towards denuclearisation. Its inspectors in July returned to North Korea for the first time since 2002, when the agency was kicked out as Pyongyang moved to re-start its Yongbyon plutonium-producing reactor.