UN warns of 'ominous' risk of escalation of nuke crisis
A UN envoy warned Saturday of a "serious and ominous" risk the North Korean nuclear crisis could escalate after returning from Pyongyang, despite new assurances from the United States that it wants a peaceful solution.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington wanted a diplomatic way out of the three-month-old standoff over the Stalinist state's nuclear programmes.
"We are not looking for a crisis. We are not looking for a war. We have no hostile intent toward North Korea," Powell said in an interview with foreign reporters released by the State Department.
But Maurice Strong, special envoy of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan who arrived in Beijing Saturday after a four-day mission to the hermit state, said things could get worse unless the two sides started trusting each other.
"There is a serious and ominous risk that this crisis could escalate," he told reporters.
"If it does, it would escalate, to my view, unnecessarily, because the positions of the parties as they have articulated them are actually quite close to each other," he said.
North Korea wants a peaceful resolution to the stand-off, and the core problem now is "a breakdown of trust and communication" with the United States, he said.
Meanwhile, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has said Washington may issue a non-aggression policy statement with North Korea if Pyongyang gives up its nuclear arms program, reports said Saturday.
Moreover, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov on Saturday began talks with North Korean counterpart Kang Sok-Ju in Pyongyang to find ways to defuse the nuclear crisis, a news agency report said.
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