WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) -- The implementation of United Nations sanctions will compel North Korea to return to the six-nation talks on its denuclearization, a U.S. official predicts.
"Our overall objective in all of this remains the same, which is to return to serious, meaningful discussion within the six-party process on denuclearization and non-proliferation,'' the senior U.S. State Department official told reporters in Washington Wednesday
The U.N. Security Council resolution calling for stricter sanctions was approved last month after North Korea's May 25 nuclear test, its second since 2006, and subsequent missile firings. The document also calls on U.N. members to inspect North Korean ships suspected of carrying missile or nuclear technology.
The six-party talks, made up of the two Koreas, the United States, Russia, China and Japan, have stalled over the North's objections to verification methods, which deal with ways to determine the accuracy of the nuclear inventory given by North Korea in June 2008.
The U.S. official referred to a recent Asian trip by a U.S. interagency team, whose members met with Chinese and Malaysian officials to coordinate the implementation efforts and to prevent North Korea from using banks as a conduit for trade in illicit arms, the Kyodo news agency reported.
The official said both China and Malaysia were willing to cooperate and that China was developing its own implementation measures, Kyodo reported.
"We don't see the U.N. resolutions or sanctions as a means to punish the North Korean people. We see the resolutions as a means to get back to our original intention of convincing North Korea that there really is only one way forward," he said.
