‘US maintains contact with India on N.Korea from time to time’

The United States maintain contact with India on the issue of North Korea, a US official has said hours after the External Affairs Minister, Salman Khurshid, met his North Korean counterpart during an ASEAN meeting in Brunei.

“India is a country that we maintain contact with on DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) from time to time and have routine interactions with, but I don’t have anything to read out (from the meeting between India and North Korean foreign ministers),” the State Department spokesperson, Patrick Ventrell, told reporters at his daily news conference yesterday.

Ventrell was responding to questions on the meeting between Khurshid and his North Korean counterpart Pak Ui-Chuan on the sidelines of the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN in Brunei.

The meeting was held at the request of the North Koreans, which is officially known as DPRK.

“They (North Koreans) were trying to explain why they take such a position on nuclear weapons. They say they are doing this to protect themselves,” Khurshid told reporters after the meeting.

“The very fact that they (North Korea) want to engage with us, they want to reach out to us, gives us good opportunity to say that if we want an honest relationship, then it is important that just as we are listening to them... they must also factor in the fact that we do have a concern about proliferation,” Khurshid said.

Responding to another query, Ventrell said the US will not recognise North Korea as a nuclear state. “We reject the potentiality of DPRK being recognised as a nuclear state. We just don’t think that’s plausible or happening,” he said.