N Korean disarmament stalled by possible succession: Hillary

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looks at a purse made of recycled plastic during her visit to a USAID-sponsored community project in the Petojo neighbourhood of Jakarta yesterday. Hillary received a rapturous welcome as she toured US AID projects in a slum in Indonesia's teeming capital.Photo: AFP

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday a looming leadership change in North Korea seems to have stalled its nuclear disarmament and that a new strategy is needed to break the deadlock.
Hillary Clinton suggested that North Korea may be taking a harder line in the disarmament talks as a result of behind-the-scenes moves to find a successor to leader Kim Jong-Il, who was reported to have had a stroke last August.
It was the first time that Hillary Clinton, speaking to reporters on the aeroplane to Seoul, had singled out the succession issue in the secretive Stalinist state as the apparent cause of the deadlock in the six-party talks.
"I think this is an especially important time for South Korea as they are confronting a lot of worries about what's up in North Korea, what the succession could be, what it means for them," Hillary Clinton told reporters.
"And they're looking to us to use our best efforts to get the agenda of denuclearisation and non-proliferation back in gear," Hillary Clinton said on the plane taking her from Jakarta to Seoul on the third leg of her Asia tour.
"I'll be emphasising that as we meet with the government leaders," she said, referring to talks with the president, the foreign minister and the defence minister.
The six-party talks have "produced some results which we want to build on but we are still facing the reality of North Korea not only possessing, we believe, some number of nuclear weapons but showing very little willingness to get back on track", she said.