By BURT HERMAN
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 1, 2006; 10:08 AM
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea on Thursday invited the chief U.S. nuclear envoy to visit the communist nation to prove Washington is committed to an agreement last year in which the North pledged to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill has previously expressed a desire to visit the North if it would help the six-nation arms negotiations, although he has said many factors would determine if such a trip could be made.
"If the U.S. has a true political intention to implement the joint statement, we kindly invite once again the head of the U.S. side's delegation to the talks to visit Pyongyang and directly explain it to us," an unidentified spokesman for the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The "joint statement" refers to a September agreement where the North pledged to abandon its nuclear development for aid and security guarantees.
No progress has since been made on implementing the pact. The full arms talks haven't been held since November, with the North refusing to attend in anger over the U.S. blacklisting a Macau-based bank and North Korean companies for alleged involvement in counterfeiting, money laundering and weapons proliferation. Washington says the moves are unrelated to the nuclear issue.
Other contacts have since been made between the sides, including through diplomats in New York along with encounters in Beijing and Japan.
Hill said he will "consult with our partners" on the North Korean invitation.
"But we must emphasize that the problem we face is not for lack of meetings or travel, but rather due to the DPRK's unwillingness to participate in the six-party talks and to fulfill their part of the bargain _ denuclearization," Hill told The Associated Press in an e-mail message. DPRK is an acronym of the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"The U.S. is committed to full implementation of the September agreement and we have said so on many occasions, including directly to the DPRK," Hill said.
The North claimed Thursday the United States was to blame for the deadlocked arms talks.
"The U.S. will never be able to find a way of solving the issue if it is so reluctant to sit with the party directly concerned with the issue, while expressing its intention to seek a negotiated settlement of such crucial issue as the nuclear issue," the North said.
"The U.S. has avoided contacts" with the North, although "the six parties agreed on re-energizing the bilateral and multilateral contacts among them to create an atmosphere favorable for" more arms talks, the spokesman said, adding that the North was committed to its earlier pledge.
In October 2000, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited North Korea _ the highest-level American official ever to travel to the country. The two nations don't have formal diplomatic relations.
The United States had previously been engaged in direct talks with North Korea that led to a 1994 agreement on halting the North's nuclear development in exchange for getting two nuclear reactors and other aid. But U.S. officials say the North admitted in late 2002 to a new secret uranium enrichment program, prompting Washington to abandon the earlier deal.
The New York-based reactor project from the earlier nuclear deal was formally shut down Wednesday by the U.S., South Korea, Japan and European Union. In Seoul, the South Korean Unification Ministry, which is in charge of dealings with the North, lamented the end of the project to build the light-water reactors _ which are believed to be difficult to divert to the production of weapons-grade uranium.
"The government thinks it is regrettable that the light-water reactor project was terminated," the ministry said in a statement.
But Japan blamed North Korea, saying it violated the spirit of the program long ago.
"I think we can say the significance of the project was already lost," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said at a regular news conference in Tokyo.
Since the outbreak of the latest nuclear crisis, the U.S. has pursued diplomacy with the North through nuclear talks hosted by China that also include Japan, Russia and South Korea.
On Thursday, Pyongyang also repeated its call for a relaxation of U.S. financial restrictions as a condition for the country's return to those stalled arms talks.
Washington's "escalated hostile policy and increasing pressure upon the DPRK would only compel it to take the strongest measures to protect its right to existence and sovereignty," the North said. "We will certainly force the U.S. to compensate for the financial loss caused to the DPRK."
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Associated Press reporter Anne Gearan in Vienna contributed to this report.