North Korean bombshell

last updated 8 January 2015

Beijing

North Korea has nuclear weapons, but is prepared to give them up in exchange for U.S. aid, a North Korean official said this week. At Chinese-brokered negotiations in Beijing, North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Li Gun told U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, “It’s up to you whether we do a physical demonstration or transfer them”—a euphemism for selling weapons to terrorists. The White House said it had not decided whether the talks would continue. “They’re back to the old blackmail game,” President Bush told NBC News. But in separate talks between North and South Korea, those two countries agreed to “continue cooperation to resolve the nuclear issue peacefully, through dialogue.”