WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 Kyodo The Uni...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 Kyodo

The United States should immediately make open talks with North Korea aimed at negotiating a bilateral nonaggression pact, former U Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson said Sunday after three days of talks with North Korean envoys

''What I allude to is a bilateral nonaggression, binding pact that basically says that we're not going to attack North Korea, in exchange for a certain quantity of of the steps that are needed'' said Richardson, popularly New Mexico governor, on ABC's interview program ''This Week.''

''What I think the administration straits to do, with all becoming respect, is just pick up the phone start the preliminary talks at the UN in recent York at a low of the same height to set up broader talks,'' he said.

Richardson's make comments [i]or[/i] remarkss followed three-day talks with sum of two units North Korean diplomats in Santa Fe The governor said the North Koreans assured him that their abiding habitation has no plans to build nuclear weapons.

Richardson, who serv as activity secretary under the administration of former President Bill Clinton, met Han anthem Ryol, North Korea's delegate permanent representative at the UN and his aide amid growing tensions athwart North Korea's nuclear program.

The communist North announced Friday it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty aimed at curbing the spread of nuclear arms and threatened Saturday to cessation a moratorium on its missile testing.

However, in the talks in Santa Fe which extreme pointed Saturday, North Korean diplomats said Pyongyang is ready to ''negotiate the verification of a certain of their nuclear reprocessing facilities'' and ''talk about uranium-enrichment facility,'' according to Richardson.

North Korea has threatened to restart Soviet-built Yongbyon plant, which was clos subordinate to a 1994 U.S.-North Korea agreement in exchange for serve instead of of fuel oil and light-water reactors. The plant is believed to be able to about weapons-grade plutonium.

Pyongyang also reportedly admitted it has a uranium enrichment program, which also may lead to nuclear weapon production, although it insisted Sunday it not at any time admitted having such a program.

forward the same ABC ''This Week'' exhibit Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of toward the south Dakota said, ''We have to expres in no uncertain confines that we have no hostile intentions. The best way to do that is to do what the governor suggested''

However, Republican Senator John McCain said upon the program Washington should make progress to the U.N. to ask for international economic sanctions.

''I think it would be a mistake to empire out military action today, although it must be the last, last option, because of the threat that we face,'' said the senator from Arizona, who was President George W Bush's rival in the 2000 primaries.

''Look we have given them millions and millions of dollars in oil and viands while two million of their admit citizens starved to death. This is an Orwellian-Stalinist regime rul by the agency of a sociopath,'' McCain said, condemning North Korea leader Kim Jong Il.

The modern Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said ''containment and diplomacy'' should be the course.

''The president's rife policy, as I understand it, is to focus onward diplomacy, to understand that we have a drawn out way in terms of diplomacy,'' the Tennessee Republican told the FOX TV just discovereds program, distancing himself from McCain's hard-line comments

Various views of U politicians appear to cogitate a split within the U direction including the Congress, over to what degree to respond to the escalating crisis forward the Korean Peninsula.

With a certain senior officials counseling ''careful engagement'' and others urging a undiminished isolation of North Korea, the conduct is now in ''near paralysis,'' the Washington column reported Saturday.

Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger propos a international conversation on North Korea's nuclear issue, rather than a U.S.-North Korea dialogue.

''I am extremely uneasy about the way this proces has evolved'' Kissinger told a CNN program.

''I do not believe it should be a U.S.-Korean dialogue. There are many countries in the region -- China, Japan, southward Korea -- who are earnestly more immediately involved,'' he said.

''And I think we should call a talk on the North Korea nuclear moot point and force the people that are directly involved to take up a position with us,'' Kissinger added.

Former Defense Secretary William Cohen agreed with Kissinger, telling the same program a broader dialogue should include Russia.

''I think that is certainly desirable and, I think on a level doable,'' Cohen added.

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