The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Monday urged the United States to build mutual trust with Pyongyang so that the six-party talks could make substantial progress towards a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

The DPRK and the US should establish trust with a will to respect and co-exist with each other, said the official Rodong Sinmum newspaper in a signed commentary, which described the trust between Pyongyang and Washington as "most essential" for advancing the six-party talks.

The DPRK hopes the US side could appear before the negotiating table with "a sound and sincere intention" to build trust on the principle of co-existence between the DPRK and the US and bring the talks to success, it said.

However, it also warned that "if the talks allow the US to persistently seek its aim to disarm the DPRK and achieve its wild ambition to bring down the latter's system while evading its responsibility for denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, it is better not to have any negotiations in that case because they will only entail serious consequences."

DPRK's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan and US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill met in Beijing in early July and agreed to reopen the six-party nuclear talks in the last week of July.
 
(Xinhua News Agnecy July 19, 2005)