SEOUL: North Korea officially said on Wednesday it would return to stalled six-country talks on ending its nuclear weapons programme.
The announcement comes about three weeks after Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test.
In Beijing on Tuesday, Chinese and United States officials announced the North had agreed to come back to the talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
US President George W Bush welcomed the decision but said he would send teams to Asia to ensure UN Security Council sanctions on the budding nuclear power after the test were enforced.
“Obviously we've still got a lot of work to do,” Bush told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.
The text of the North's official KCNA news agency report on the decision:
A spokesman for the DPRK (North Korean) Foreign Ministry gave the following answer to a question put by KCNA on November 1 as regards the bilateral and multi-lateral contacts made in Beijing with main emphasis on the DPRK-US contact: The DPRK recently took a self-defensive counter-measure against the US daily increasing nuclear threat and financial sanctions against it.
Bilateral and multi-lateral contacts took place in Beijing on October 31 with main emphasis on the contact between the DPRK and the US.
Discussed there were issues of seeking ways for the resumption of the six-party talks.
The DPRK decided to return to the six-party talks on the premise that the issue of lifting financial sanctions will be discussed and settled between the DPRK and the US within the framework of the six-party talks.
