DPRK ready for resumption of six-party talks

A spokesman for the foreign ministry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Saturday the DPRK was ready for resumption of the six-party talks, official news agency KCNA reported.

In answering a question raised by the KCNA about a recent DPRK Foreign Ministry delegation visit to China, the spokesman said the DPRK was ready for the resumption of the denuclearization talks but would not act hastily. It would make ceaseless patient efforts "now that the US and some other participating countries are not ready for them".

The spokesman said the delegation had "an exhaustive and candid discussion on DPRK-China relations, the resumption of the six-party talks and the regional situation".

The DPRK remained unchanged in its will to "implement the Sept. 19 joint statement adopted at the six-party talks for denuclearizing the whole Korean Peninsula", the spokesman said.

The DPRK delegation, headed by First Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Kye Gwan, visited China on Oct. 12-16.

The statement, which was approved at the fourth round of the six-party talks held in Beijing on Sept. 19, 2005, called for further talks to form a permanent peace system on the Korean Peninsula.

The six-party talks, involving China, the DPRK, the United States, South Korea, Russia and Japan, are a multilateral dialogue mechanism brokered by the Chinese government in an effort to seek a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.

One of the stumbling blocks of the talks is the verification issue. The US side claims that inspectors, according to the deal reached with the DPRK, could take samples away from the DPRK's nuclear facilities, but the DPRK insists that it has never agreed.

The DPRK announced a pullout from the six-party talks in response to a U.N. decision to apply sanctions in 2009 following rocket tests by the DPRK, leaving the future of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula shrouded in uncertainty since.