North, South Korea break ice; US says talks off table till denuclearisation

North and South Korea held their first talks in over two years on Tuesday, which Washington welcomed as a first step to solving the North Korean nuclear weapons crisis, even though Pyongyang said those were aimed only at the United States and not up for discussion.
The US State Department said Washington would be interested in joining future talks, but stuck to its insistence that they must be aimed at denuclearisation, showing that a diplomatic breakthrough remains far off.
In a joint statement after 11 hours of talks, North and South Korea said they had agreed to hold military-to-military talks and that North Korea would send a large delegation to next month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea.
However, North Korea made a “strong complaint” after Seoul proposed talks to denuclearise the Korean peninsula.
“Clearly this is a positive development,” a spokesman for the US State Department, Steve Goldstein, said of the joint statement, while adding: “We would like nuclear talks to occur; we want denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. This is a good first step in that process.”
North and South Korea said they agreed to meet again to resolve problems and avert accidental conflict, amid high tension over North Korea’s programme to develop nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States.
“All our weapons, including atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs and ballistic missiles, are only aimed at the United States, not our brethren, nor China and Russia,” Pyongyang’s chief negotiator, Ri Son Gwon, said.
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