VIENNA — President George W. Bush warned North Korea on Wednesday against test-firing a long-range missile, while other U.S. officials rejected Pyongyang's offer of bilateral talks with Washington on the issue.
Bush, speaking in Vienna after meeting EU leaders, said North Korea must abide by international agreements.
"North Koreans have made agreements with us in the past and we expect them to keep their agreements," Bush said.
"For example agreements on test launches -- we think it would be in the world's interest to know what they're testing, what they intend to do on their test," he told reporters.
Washington says there is evidence North Korea might test-fire its Taepodong-2 long-range missile and has activated a ground-based interceptor missile-defense system in case Pyongyang goes ahead.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the North wanted talks with the United States over its planned missile test, a sign Pyongyang might be ready to step back from the mounting crisis.
Washington ruled out any special talks over the issue that it, along with South Korea and Japan, says poses a grave danger to a region already worried by North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
"We know that the U.S. is concerned about our missile test launch," Yonhap quoted North Korea's deputy chief of mission at the United Nations in New York, Han Song-ryol, as saying.
"Our position is to solve this situation through discussions," Han said, while asserting Pyongyang's right to develop and test missiles.
John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, rejected the offer.
"I must say you don't normally engage in conversations by threatening to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles. It's not a way to produce a conversation because if you acquiesce in aberrant behavior you simply encourage the repetition of it, which we're obviously not going to do," he told reporters.
'Something We Can't Accept'
In an interview with CNN, Bolton said the United States would consider a North Korean missile launch over Japan a clear threat to international peace and security and that is "something we can't accept."
Signs of test preparations are "very serious" but Washington does not know what kind of payload the missile carries and "we don't know exactly what North Korea has in mind. ... It could be this is an exercise. It could be it's a provocation. It could be it's a real preparation for a launch," he said.
Bolton urged China, Pyongyang's chief ally, to do more to persuade the isolated communist state to forgo any launch.
North Korea shocked the world in 1998 when it fired a missile, part of which flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean. Pyongyang trumpeted that as a satellite launch.
The six-way talks, involving the two Koreas, Japan, China, the United States and Russia, have been stalled since November. They are aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear arms programs in return for aid and security assurances.
U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer told reporters in Tokyo all options were on the table in terms of a response to any missile launch, although other U.S. officials have said Washington was unlikely to try to shoot it down.
Tokyo has also threatened a harsh response.
Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his attempts to bring North Korea in from the cold, canceled a trip to Pyongyang planned for next week because of the tensions. Kim had hoped to use the meeting to help restart the nuclear talks.
North Korea has refused to return to the talks unless the United States ends a crackdown on firms it suspects of aiding the North in illicit activity such as counterfeiting.
Some analysts said North Korea may be feeling the crackdown and Pyongyang is piqued that U.S. and world attention has shifted to concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions.
"One reason North Korea may be preparing for a test is because what they want to avoid is the perception of weakness," said a diplomatic source in Seoul. "They are feeling strangled."
Feeds