North Korea will stay away from international nuclear disarmament talks, Russia's foreign minister said on Friday after visiting the secretive state and pressing Pyongyang to return to the sputtering discussions. North Korea, which raised regional tensions with a defiant rocket launch earlier this month widely seen as a disguised test of a long-range missile, can send satellites into orbit on Russian rockets, Sergei Lavrov said after leaving North Korea. North Korea responded to UN punishment for the launch by saying it would boycott the nuclear talks with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States as well as restart its plant that makes arms-grade plutonium that was being taken apart under the deal.
Talks: "North Korea at this point does not intend to return to the six-party talks," Lavrov told reporters in Seoul through a translator. Lavrov, the first high-level envoy from a global power to visit the reclusive North since after the launch, and South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan agreed to work together to have North Korea return to the nuclear talks, Yu said at the joint news conference. Russia is willing to send the North's satellites into space in line with a similar cooperation deal it has with the South, Lavrov was quoted as saying by Russia's Interfax news agency. Experts are uncertain if the impoverished North can actually produce a working satellite, let alone place it into orbit. Lavrov, who delivered a message from the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to the North's leader Kim Jong-il, told reporters his country stood by the UN move to chastise Pyongyang and tighten existing sanctions that limit the North's arms trade and imports.
Lavrov did not meet Kim, 67, who was suspected of having a stroke in August and did not make an appearance at major public events for months after that until he appeared at the annual meeting of parliament about two weeks ago walking with a limp.