North Korea is waiting for the United States to apologize for calling it an "outpost of tyranny" before the communist state will return to nuclear talks, a senior official said, as the North announced Friday it will convene a rubber-stamp parliament expected to endorse its boycott of the talks. In a one-sentence dispatch, the communist country's official Korean Central News Agency said the meeting of the Supreme People's Assembly would be held April 11. Pyongyang originally said it would convene the meeting in early March, after its bold Feb. 10 statement that it had nuclear weapons and would indefinitely boycott six-nation disarmament talks.The parliament, filled with regime loyalists and lacking any real power, was expected then to endorse the North's decision to avoid the arms talks. A week before the February meeting, the session was postponed without explanation. The delay triggered speculation among North Korea watchers, with some believing Pyongyang might be leaving itself room to back down from its Feb. 10 statement and return to the talks. Friday's announcement that the parliament will meet comes after North Korea said Thursday that it wanted to be treated as an equal at the six-nation disarmament talks, now that it claims to have nuclear weapons. It also urged the United States to verifiably remove all its potential nuclear threats in the region. "Now that we have become a nuclear power, the six-party talks should be disarmament talks where participants can solve the issue on an equal basis," an unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Still, Pyongyang is waiting for the United States apologize over U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice labeling the North one of the world's "outposts of tyranny." Rice has refused to apologize, but during a trip to the region last month she pointedly labeled the North a "sovereign" country - a comment many saw as an attempt to soften her earlier remark. However, Han Song-ryol, deputy chief of the North's mission to the U.N., said Pyongyang felt Rice's recent comment "cannot be taken as being equivalent to an apology."
"In order to reopen the talks, there should be the right justification and conditions," South Korea's Yonhap News Agency quoted Han as saying. "That is a clear apology from the U.S. for the outpost of tyranny remarks." Han said the North's statement Thursday was meant to highlight Pyongyang's view that the latest crisis stems from a perceived U.S. nuclear threat. Washington has said it has withdrawn all nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula. "It depends on the U.S. whether the six-party talks resume or not," he said. "But, I don't think the U.S. will drop its hostile policy."