SEOUL, April 16 (UPI) -- U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney called on Friday for South Korea to be more aggressive in bringing pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.
In a meeting in Seoul with Prime Minister Goh Kun, South Korea's acting president, Cheney said he was afraid that North Korea may possess atomic bombs, citing recent information gained from Abdul Qadeer Khan, a top former Pakistani nuclear scientist who reportedly saw nuclear devices in North Korea.
"During today's talks, Vice President Cheney expressed concerns that North Korea has nuclear weapons based on the new information (gleaned from Khan)," Goh's spokesman Han Duk-soo told journalists. "The two leaders agreed to step up concerted efforts to make the six-way talks to produce progress as quickly as possible," Han said.
The United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia are trying to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear development program. They held two rounds of six-party talks, the latest one in February, but no agreements have been reached. The countries have agreed to keep the process going by creating lower-level working groups to prepare for the next round.
Cheney expressed concerns that Pyongyang intended to buy time to make more nuclear weapons while stalling negotiations with the United States with the demand of simultaneous actions. "Cheney called for Seoul to step up efforts to keep North Korea from using the multilateral talks to earn time to make nuclear weapons," Han said.
"As allies and partners in the six-party talks, we are committed to a peaceful resolution of this (nuclear) problem," Cheney was quoted as saying. "Our nations stand together in insisting on a Korean peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons," Cheney said.
Cheney voiced the same worries about the North's possession of nuclear weapons while meeting with South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon earlier Friday, ministry officials said. They said the U.S. vice president, armed with the new evidence of Pyongyang's atomic weapons capabilities, has sought Seoul's greater role in defusing the nuclear crisis.
The New York Times said earlier this week that Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear programs, has said that when he visited North Korea five years ago, he was taken to a secret underground nuclear plant and shown what he described as three nuclear devices. Khan made the claim during interrogation in connection with his confession that he had sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, the story said.
Despite the report, South Korean officials said they were not changing their assessment of North Korea's nuclear capabilities. They say the North has only enough plutonium for one or two atomic bombs, and there is no concrete evidence on the North's possession of atomic weapons.
But U.S. officials believe that the North already has one or two nuclear bombs and can produce several more within months by extracting weapons-grade plutonium from its 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods. Washington also accuses Pyongyang of running a uranium-enrichment program to develop atomic weapons. The North denies having uranium program in addition to the publicly known plutonium-based facilities.
In China, Cheney warned of the risk of a nuclear arms race in East Asia if international pressure fails to disarm North Korea, saying the North's nuclear technology could also reach terrorist groups.
"We worry given what they've done in the past, and given current capabilities, that North Korea could very well provide this technology to someone else, or terror groups," he said in a speech at Shanghai. "We know that there are terror groups like Al-Qaida that have tried to acquire nuclear weapons before," he said, describing North Korea as "one of the most serious problems in the region today."
Cheney, as Bush's second in command, is widely known for his neo-conservative political stance, especially when it comes to cracking down on countries on North Korea.
In Seoul, Cheney said that the United States is thankful to South Korea for its plan to dispatch troops to Iraq to help the U.S.-led coalition with reconstruction in the war-ravaged country. "Our nation is grateful to your commitment to peace and stability in this region and beyond," he said.
South Korea has promised to send some 3,600 troops, half of them combatants, to help rebuild Iraq at the request of the United States. The deployment would make Seoul the biggest coalition partner after the United States and Britain.
South Korea, a key U.S. ally and is home to 37,000 American troops stationed to help defend it from a potential conflict with North Korea under a bilateral defense treaty signed after the 1950-1953 Korean War.
Cheney made a visit to the U.S. troops stationed in Yongsan Garrison in central Seoul before leaving for Washington after a two-day visit to Seoul, part of an Asian tour that also took him to China and Japan.
"Living on the border between freedom and tyranny, the people of Korea understand the urgency of our cause in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East," Cheney told U.S. soldiers.
Cheney did not meet Roh, who was impeached on March 12 for a minor election law violation, accusations of incompetence and alleged involvement in corruption scandals. But Roh received a vote of confidence when his Uri Party captured a majority in Thursday's parliamentary election.
