United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday she is cautiously optimistic that it may be possible to begin carrying out a September 2005 agreement on ending North Korea’s nuclear programs.
”I think there may be — I am cautiously optimistic that we may be able to begin, again, to implement the joint statement of 2005 toward the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” Rice told a congressional panel.
Six-party talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US resumed on Thursday in Beijing and South Korean officials said North Korea was willing to take initial steps towards ending its nuclear-arms program.
The talks in September 2005 produced an agreement under which North Korea said it was committed ”to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes”. In return, the others held out economic, political and security incentives.
”I am, as I said, cautiously optimistic, but I don’t count my chickens until they are hatched,” Rice later told lawmakers on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. — Reuters