nuclear-news

North Korea ready to resume talks on its nuclear programme, says UN envoy  No missile tests planned but country must ‘remain ready’, while Kim Jong-un’s illness ‘fabricated rumour’, says So Se Pyong The Guardian, Friday 3 October 2014 North Korea is ready to resume six-party talks on its nuclear programme but must maintain its readiness in the face of joint US-South Korean military exercises, a senior envoy in Geneva said on Thursday.So Se Pyong, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told Reuters that his country was not planning a nuclear or missile test.

In a wide-ranging interview, he said that reports about the ill health of its leader Kim Jong-un were “fabricated rumours” and that it was not clear whether the US was willing to negotiate the release of three detained Americans.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks with North Korea’s foreign minister in Moscow on Wednesday that he saw a possibility thatstalled talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear programme could resume, but it would take time.

“For the six-party talks we are ready, and as far as I think, China and Russia and the DPRK are ready,” So said in the interview in the DPRK’s mission overlooking Lake Geneva.

“But America, they don’t like that kind of talks right now. Because America does not like that, so that’s why the countries like South Korea, Japan also are not ready for those talks.”

North Korea promised to abandon its nuclear programme in 2005 but appeared to renege on the agreement when it tested nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009………http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/03/north-korea-ready-resume-nuclear-programme-talks-un-envoy-so-se-pyong