SKorea Balks at Measures to Sanction North

[cal04]

South Korea balked Monday at Washington's demand that it fully join a U.S.-led effort to intercept North Korean ships suspected of carrying supplies for the North's nuclear and missile weapons programs.

The South insisted that it was already doing enough to stem possible weapons proliferation from North Korea - which detonated a nuclear bomb on Oct. 9 - and announced no new measures to sanction the North under a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the test.

The decision underscored Seoul's reluctance to anger Pyongyang and complicated efforts to resolve the standoff over the North's nuclear program now that the communist regime has agreed to return to long-stalled international nuclear disarmament talks.

``It's basically not necessary to take (new) measures,'' Park In-kook, a deputy foreign minister, said at a news briefing, citing ``the unique circumstances'' on the Korean peninsula as motivating the South's decision not to fully join the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6211195,00.html

[MGD]

1. It's hard to take an aggressive position with a madman who just exploded a nuclear device.

Who can blame them? Talk about being "within range."