The United
States rejected a North Korean proposal to discuss a peace treaty to formally
end the Korean War because it did not address denuclearization on the
peninsula, the State Department said on Sunday.
State
Department spokesman John Kirby made the comment in response to a Wall Street
Journal report that the White House secretly agreed to peace talks just before
Pyongyang's latest nuclear bomb test.
The newspaper,
citing U.S. officials familiar with the events, said the Obama administration
dropped its condition that Pyongyang take steps to curtail its nuclear arsenal
before any peace talks take place, instead calling for North Korea's atomic
weapons program to be just one part of the discussion.
Pyongyang
declined the proposal, and its Jan. 6 nuclear test ended the diplomatic plans,
the newspaper reported.
"To be
clear, it was the North Koreans who proposed discussing a peace treaty,"
Kirby said in an emailed statement.
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