North Korea still defiant as talks resume

December 19, 2006|By Items compiled from Tribune news services.

BEIJING, CHINA — North Korea reasserted its right to build nuclear weapons, and the United States said it was losing patience, as six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear arms program resumed Monday, two months after the North Koreans defied intense international pressure and tested an atomic bomb.

North Korea's decision to return to negotiations so soon after the test could help defuse fears of an arms race in Asia, but there is little expectation that the talks will lead to a sudden easing of tensions.

Some experts said the talks would be fruitless unless the U.S. relaxed economic and financial penalties that it has imposed on North Korea.

Envoys from China, North Korea, South Korea, the U.S., Russia and Japan met in Beijing in an effort to revive a 2005 agreement on ridding the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons.