Clinton sees nuclear deal with North Korea in months

Former US President Bill Clinton said on Friday North Korea must not be allowed to develop or sell nuclear weapons, but said a deal to defuse a nuclear crisis involving the isolated nation may be just months away.

Clinton, whose administration negotiated the 1994 Agreed Framework deal with North Korea, said he thought it posed a danger not because it was likely to attack its neighbours but because it might develop and sell nuclear weapons.

"I personally believe it's very important for us to offer them a comprehensive deal," Clinton said via a video link from his home in New York.

"I also believe frankly we have to be prepared if we fail, to do whatever we have to do to stop them from developing more nuclear weapons and being able to sell it," Clinton told a forum held in Tokyo by CLSA, a unit of French bank Credit Agricole.

"I think it's very, very dangerous. Not because I think Kim Jong-il really wants to drop a bomb on South Korea or Japan but because any country that poor that's got something worth as much as nuclear materials, nuclear weapons, long-range missiles are worth to the wrong kind of people in the world, can be a powerful source of disintegration," Clinton said.

"But I think a deal can be made and frankly I'll be surprised if you don't see another one made in the next few months," he added.

Six-country talks in Beijing in February - involving the two Koreas, Japan, China, the United States and Russia - agreed to establish working groups to hammer out details of how to end the nuclear crisis.

The crisis erupted in October 2002 when US officials said North Korea had admitted to pursuing a clandestine weapons programme in violation of the 1994 Agreed Framework. Under that accord, North Korea had promised to freeze its nuclear programme in return for two light-water reactors for power generation and oil shipments. The oil shipments have since been cut off, and the United States and its key Asian and European allies in the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation said last November that they were suspending the North Korean nuclear power project for one year.

- REUTERS