By Xinhua
Washington : The United States said on Monday that it will have consultations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) after the latter missed a year-end deadline to disclose fully its nuclear program.
“There has been no last-minute change,” said State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey as the deadline passed. “It’s unfortunate but we are going to keep on working on this.
“I expect there will be some consultations on this over the next few days among the parties to see how we want to proceed from here,” the spokesman said.
Noting “we want that declaration to be full and complete,” Casey said that Christopher Hill, top U.S. envoy to the six-party talks on the nuclear issue of the Korean peninsula, will have telephone talks with his counterparts from China, South Korea, Japan and Russia in the coming days.
State Department spokesman Rob McInturff told reporters on Sunday that the United States has been expecting the DPRK to provide a full account of its nuclear weapons program under a disarmament-for-aid deal.
“If that doesn’t happen by midnight (on December 31), we’ll reevaluate and look to other options,” the spokesman said.
Under an agreement reached in October at the six party talks, the DPRK agreed to disable its key nuclear facilities at the Yongbyon complex, and to declare all other nuclear programs by the end of the year.
U.S. President George W. Bush wrote early this month to DPRK leader Kim Jong-Il, calling for a fully disclose of DPRK nuclear programs.
It was reported that the U.S.-supervised disablement is going well, but the December 31 deadline for a full declaration may slip into early 2008.
U.S. officials have said that they are ready to wait a short while for a full and complete declaration from Pyongyang.