N. Korea stonewalls on weapon demands

? South Korea demanded Sunday that North Korea abandon any atomic weapons development, but Northern negotiators in Pyongyang stonewalled the nuclear discussion, calling it a matter between North Korea and the United States.

Chief North Korean delegate Kim Ryong Song refused to confirm a claim made during talks last week with U.S. and Chinese officials in Beijing that North Korea is making nuclear weapons and instead sought to steer Sunday’s Cabinet-level talks toward inter-Korean economic projects, Seoul officials said.

Washington believes North Korea has one or two atomic bombs and may be trying to make more. The North has disputed that claim, saying its nuclear program is meant to generate much-needed electricity.

Possession of nuclear weapons would be a “serious violation” of a 1992 inter-Korean agreement to keep the peninsula nuclear-free, South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun reminded North Korea, according to South Korean government spokesman Shin Eun-sang.

“We made it clear that we can never accept North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons,” Shin said Sunday, according to South Korean pool reports from Pyongyang. “We emphasized that the North should dismantle nuclear weapons, if it had any, as well as its nuclear facilities.”

Jeong is leading a five-member South Korean delegation to Pyongyang in the first high-level talks between the Koreas since President Roh Moo-hyun took office in February. Foreign journalists were not allowed to cover the event.

During Sunday’s talks, North Korea would say only that it made a “new, bold” proposal to the United States during the Beijing talks, Shin said, and instead tried to discuss linking cross-border railways and other economic projects with South Korea.

The projects are part of a reconciliation process that grew out of a historic North-South summit in June 2000.