Let’s talk, North Korea tells Washington

PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA — After months of threatening to wage a nuclear war, North Korea did an about-face Sunday and issued a surprise proposal to the United States, its No. 1 enemy: Let’s talk.

But the invitation comes with caveats: No preconditions and no demands that Pyongyang give up its prized nuclear assets unless Washington is willing to do the same — ground rules that make it hard for the Americans to accept.

Washington responded by saying that it is open to talks — but only if North Korea shows it will comply with UN Security Council resolutions and live up to its international obligations.

“As we have made clear, our desire is to have credible negotiations with the North Koreans, but those talks must involve North Korea living up to its obligations to the world, including compliance with UN Security Council resolutions, and ultimately result in denuclearization,” U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement. “We will judge North Korea by its actions, and not its words.”

North Korea’s call for “seniorlevel” talks signals a shift in policy in Pyongyang after months of acrimony.

Pyongyang ramped up the antiAmerican rhetoric early this year after its launch of a long-range rocket in December and a nuclear test in February drew tightened UN and U.S. sanctions. Posters went up across the North Korean capital calling on citizens to “wipe away the American imperialist aggressors.”

The U.S. and ally South Korea countered by stepping up annual springtime military exercises, which prompted North Korea to warn of a “nuclear war” on the Korean Peninsula.

But as tensions began subsiding in May and June, Pyongyang began making tentative, if unsuccessful, overtures to re-establish dialogue with Seoul and Washington.

Meanwhile, the virulent antiAmerican billboards plastered across the city were taken down. And on Sunday, as scores of people fanned out across Pyongyang to help carry out the latest urban renewal projects in the capital — landscaping and construction — the National Defense Commission issued a statement through state media proposing talks with the U.S. to ease tensions and discuss a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War.

SpeakingonCBS’sFacetheNation show Sunday, U.S. President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, said Washington has been “quite clear” that officials support dialogue and have engaged Pyongyang in talks in the past.

But “those talks have to be real. They have to be based on them living up to their obligations, to include on proliferation, on nuclear weapons, on smuggling and other things,” he said. “And so we’ll judge them by their actions, not by the nice words that we heard yesterday.”