US Will Not Pay for Cooperation

The United States has reiterated that it has no intention of offering North Korea compensation for freezing its nuclear weapons programme. "We've made clear that we don't plan on extending any compensation ourselves for North Korea not to do things it never should have been doing," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said during a regular press briefing.

The comment came after the North expressed its hope, through China, that its "freeze-for-compensation" proposal will top the agenda of a soon-to-be established working-group meeting of six countries involved in the process of resolving the 17-month nuclear dispute. Pyongyang's proposal calls for the United States to give it a series of political and economic concessions in exchange for putting its nuclear activities on hold.