SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Sunday proposed high-level talks with the United States, saying that it was ready to discuss easing tensions and eventually denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.
The North’s proposal indicated that it was shifting to dialogue after months of bellicose rhetoric, including threats to launch nuclear strikes at the United States and South Korea, that have raised tensions to the highest in tears. North Korea had also proposed dialogue with South Korea earlier this month, though their initial agreement to hold high-level dialogue in Seoul collapsed last week over a difference over the level of their chief delegates.
We “propose high-level talks between the North Korean and U.S. governments to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula and establish regional peace and security,” a spokesman of the National Defense Commission, the North’s top governing agency, said in an “important statement” carried by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The spokesman said North Korea and the United States can meet “any time and at any place the United States wants.”
He said North Korea reaffirmed that “the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was an unchanged will and resolution of our military and the people.” To stress the credibility of that statement, the spokesman attributed it to the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, and his son, Kim Jong-il, who was succeeded in turn by his son, Kim Jong-un.
But North Korea also made it clear on Sunday that it would discuss dismantling its nuclear weapons programs with the United States, but only as part of broader nuclear arms reduction talks in the region.
It also reiterated that it wanted to negotiate a peace treaty to replace the 1953 Korean War armistice and formally end the war.
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