North Korea wants direct talks with United States over missile test

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea said Wednesday it wants direct talks with the United States over its apparent plans to test-fire a long-range missile, a day after the country issued a bristling statement in which it declared its right to carry out the launch.\nPresident Bush said North Korea faces further isolation from the international community if it test-fires the missile believed capable of reaching U.S. soil.\n"It should make people nervous when non-transparent regimes who have announced they have nuclear warheads, fire missiles," Bush said at a meeting with European leaders in Vienna, Austria. "This is not the way you conduct business in the world."\nTensions in the region have soared following intelligence reports that the North was fueling a ballistic missile believed capable of reaching U.S. territory. The United States and Japan have said they could consider sanctions against the impoverished country if it goes ahead, and Washington was weighing responses that could include attempting to shoot the missile down.\nA spokesman for former South Korean President Kim Dae-jungcited the missile crisis as the reason for canceling a trip next week to the North that could have offered a rare chance for talks to soothe tensions.\nSouth Korea also said that its humanitarian aid to North Korea might be affected by such a test.\n"If North Korea test-fires a missile, it might have an impact on aid of rice and fertilizer to North Korea," South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok told opposition lawmakers, according to his spokesman.\nSouth Korea has shipped 150,000 tons of fertilizer this year and had planned to send another 200,000 tons. Pyongyang has asked for 500,000 tons of rice this year, but Seoul has yet to agree.\nAt the Vienna summit, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said that if North Korea fires the missile, Europe would join the United States in condemning it.\n"There will be a strong statement, strong answer from the international community and Europe will be part of it," Schuessel said.\nAs countries urged Pyongyang not to conduct the test, the chief of staff of China's military met Wednesday with an army commander from North Korea and the North's ambassador to China, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.\nThe Chinese military chief, Liang Guanglie, told North Korean army commander Ri Yong Hwan that China was eager to expand cooperation between the two armed forces, Xinhua said.\nThe brief report did not mention the apparent missile test plans.\nNorth Korea said in comments published Wednesday that its self-imposed 1999 moratorium on testing long-range missiles no longer applies because it's not in direct dialogue with Washington, suggesting it would hold off on any launch if Washington agreed to new talks.\n"Some say our missile test launch is a violation of the moratorium, but this is not the case," Han Song Ryol, deputy chief of North Korea's mission to the United Nations, told South Korea's Yonhap news agency in an interview from New York.\n"North Korea as a sovereign state has the right to develop, deploy, test-fire and export a missile," he said. "We are aware of the U.S. concerns about our missile test-launch. So our position is that we should resolve the issue through negotiations."\nPyongyang has consistently pressed for direct dialogue with the United States, while Washington insists it will only speak to the North at six-nation nuclear talks. The North has refused to return to those nuclear talks since November because of a U.S. crackdown on the country's alleged illicit financial activity.\nOn Wednesday, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Thomas Scheiffer, called on Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks but did not address the possibility of bilateral negotiations.\n"They have the opportunity to do that through the six-party talks," he said. "They don't have to undertake bad policies in order to talk to the United States."\nHe also said the United States has means of responding to a North Korean missile test that it didn't have the last time Pyongyang carried out a launch in 1998, and is considering "all options."\nScheiffer didn't specify what those options were, but defense officials in Washington told The Associated Press that the White House was weighing responses to a missile launch that could include attempting to shoot it down while in flight over the Pacific. However, such a move was considered unlikely.\nOn Tuesday, North Korea asserted its right to test-fire missiles in a sharply worded statement to Japanese reporters in Pyongyang.\n"This issue concerns our autonomy. Nobody has a right to slander that right," the Kyodo News agency quoted North Korean Foreign Ministry official Ri Pyong Dok as saying.\nU.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said signs of a possible North Korean launch remained uncertain.\n"They seem to be moving toward a launch, but the intelligence is not conclusive at this point," Hadley told reporters on Air Force One on the way to Europe, where President Bush was meeting Wednesday with European leaders.\nBad weather at the launch site Wednesday dimmed chances of an immediate test.