SEOUL - South Korea Tuesday questioned North Korea's calls for a peace treaty with the United States, declaring its real aim is to buy time to make more nuclear weapons.
The comments by Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan came six days before a US envoy is scheduled to visit the communist state to try to persuade it to return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks.
"North Korea's talk of a peace pact is aimed at buying time and continuing developing nuclear weapons so that it may be recognized as a nuclear state," Yu told a forum.
The minister also said any bilateral US-North Korea peace treaty directly linked to the settlement of the nuclear issue would not be proper.
The North's position is that it has already resolved all inter-Korean issues through the 1992 Basic Agreement signed with Seoul and that a peace treaty should be signed with Washington, Yu said.
"But any peace treaty must come through discussions involving the four parties concerned, South Korea, North Korea, the United States and China," he stressed.
A US-led United Nations Command fought for the South in the 1950-53 war while Chinese troops supported the North. The conflict ended only with an armistice and not a formal peace treaty.
The six-party talks group the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan. Nuclear disarmament agreements signed at the forum in 2005 and 2007 envisage an eventual peace pact formally ending the war.
However the North quit the six-party talks in April and tested a second atomic weapon in May. Leader Kim Jong-Il said in October he was ready to return to the talks, but only if bilateral discussions with the United States are satisfactory.
Stephen Bosworth, US special representative for North Korean policy, is scheduled to visit Pyongyang on December 8 but Seoul officials have been downbeat about hopes for progress.
A senior official told a background briefing this week there was "no confirmed signal" that the North would return to the six-party talks.
"At the moment, we must say the prospects are dark," the official said.
