US President George W. Bush on Friday urged North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il to fully disclose his country's nuclear programs, stores of atomic materials, and any "proliferation activities."
"There's a way forward for Kim Jong-Il, and an important step is a full declaration of programs, materials that may have been developed to create weapons, as well as the proliferation activities of the regime," said Bush. The US president did not specify a timetable, and top US officials have suggested that a December 31 deadline for a full declaration may slip into early 2008.
Bush did not comment on North Korea's response to his first direct communication with Kim, a December 1 letter. The White House said earlier that North Korea had provided a "verbal reply" via diplomats in New York.
"I got his attention with a letter, and he can get my attention by fully disclosing his programs, including any plutonium he may have processed and converted - whatever he's used it for, we just need to know," he said.
"As well, he can get our attention by fully disclosing his proliferation activities," said Bush, who underlined the importance of six-party efforts to dismantle the Stalinist regime's nuclear weapons programs. That diplomatic effort groups China, Japan, Russia, North and South Korea, and the United States.
Earlier, US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said that North Korea had provided "a verbal reply" to Bush's December 1 letter. "All members of the Six Party Talks look forward to the full implementation of the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," said the spokesman, who declined to the content of the reply.
But a US official who asked not to be named summed it up as: "We'll live up to our side. We hope you live up to yours." In his letter, the US president urged Kim to fully disclose his secretive country's atomic activities as agreed by year's end and said held out the prospect of normalised diplomatic relations.
"I want to emphasise that the declaration must be complete and accurate if we are to continue our progress," Bush wrote, according to a US official familiar with the content of the December 1 letter. The North shocked the world with its first nuclear test in October 2006.
It agreed in February in the six-party talks to disable its plutonium-producing plants and declare all nuclear programs and facilities by year-end in return for major energy aid.