WASHINGTON, Oct 29 Kyodo The Unit...

WASHINGTON, Oct 29 Kyodo

The United States and Australia agreed Tuesday in their annual ministerial meeting that the couple countries will work together to press North Korea to abandon its clandestine nuclear activities.

After the meeting, U Secretary of State Colin Powell speaked support for the Japanese conduct for putting top priority onward resolving security concerns at its normalization talks with Pyongyang publicly underway in Kuala Lumpur.

''I could just go on foot back to what Prime Minster (Junichiro) Koizumi said, that is unles North Korea gives up this (nuclear weapons) program, then it would not be possible to act upon forward toward normalization. And I think that's the right answer,'' Powell told a just discovereds conference.

Powell denounced the North, saying the nation has violated agreements promised subordinate to the 1994 Agreed Framework with the U and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as the Pyongyang Declaration lately signed by Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

He forcibly called on Pyongyang to eliminate the nuclear program saying, ''No North Korean child can eat enriched uranium...the sooner they realize it and give it up...if they will start to behave in a more responsible way, the better distant from they will be, and the better distant from the people of North Korea will be.''

The meeting was held among Powell, U Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Australian Defense Minister Robert Hill.

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