North Korea suggests high-level talks with U.S.

SEOUL — The North Korean government Sunday suggested a high-level meeting with the United States “to ease the tension on the Korean peninsula,” less than a week after its scheduled working-level talks with Seoul were called off.

In what North Korea’s National Defense Commission called an “important statement” on the state-run Korean Central Television, Pyongyang said that if the U.S. is “sincerely interested in keeping the peace and security in the region, including the mainland United States,” the two countries should hold high-level talks.

In Washington, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough greeted the overture warily, saying that North Korea must prove it is serious by taking steps on key concerns raised by the global community.

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“Obviously, we’ve always been quite clear that dialogue is our preferred outcome here,” McDonough said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” But, he said, “those talks have to be real. They have to be based on them living up to their obligations … on proliferation, on nuclear weapons, on smuggling and other things.”

“The bottom line,” McDonough said, “is they’re not going to be able to talk their way out of the very significant sanctions they’re under now, sanctions that Russia supported and, very importantly, that China supported.”

In its statement, Pyongyang proposed that the two countries meet at a venue and date of Washington’s choice and said the two sides could discuss issues such as “easing the military tension” and denuclearization.

The hard-line communist state emphasized that there shouldn’t be any precondition to the talks and that North Koreans would “keep their nuclear-state status, whether others acknowledge it or not” until the “external nuclear threats completely come to an end.”

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North Korea has been globally criticized and seen sanctions expand in the wake of a long-range rocket launch in December, which it claimed was for scientific purposes only. The state also carried out a nuclear test in early February, saying it was in response to Washington’s “hostile policy.”

Earlier this month, North Korea seemed to soften its attitude when it called for rare working-level talks with South Korea before a meeting in California between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping. However, the North wound up shelving the talks, expressing dissatisfaction over the South’s choice of delegates.

Obama and Xi agreed to push for the denuclearization of North Korea. Seoul announced that South Korean President Park Geun-hye would discuss denuclearization with Xi at their meeting this month.

The last high-level talks between the U.S. and North Korea were in February 2012.

Choi is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Neela Banerjee in Washington contributed to this report.