HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- The United States and its partners in the campaign to force North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program won the support Sunday of a broad summit of Pacific Rim nations, the latest effort to step up pressure in slow-moving talks with the Pyongyang government.
The declaration was issued in an informal statement delivered by the conference host, the president of Vietnam, rather than a formal, written paper -- a distinction suggesting a less authoritative step.
It was issued at the end of the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group, shortly before President Bush, who spent the weekend in Hanoi, flew to Ho Chi Minh City.
Bush came to Asia to attend the Pacific Rim economic summit. But issues of nuclear proliferation and security have formed the backdrop each day, from a speech in Singapore on Thursday in which he called for broad cooperation throughout the region for the effort to corral North Korea's nuclear weapons program, to the likely focus on Islamic-based terrorism this afternoon in Indonesia. Security concerns in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, were limiting his visit to barely six hours.
At the end of the Hanoi meeting, President Nguyen Minh Triet of Vietnam read a statement saying that North Korea's test of a nuclear device Oct. 9, and its missile launches three months earlier, posed "a nuclear threat" to peace and security and to the summit nations' goal of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. He called for full implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, which include the threat of sanctions to pressure North Korea to renounce its nuclear-weapons program.
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White House officials Sunday cited the statement as a sign that the United States and its allies remain on the same track regarding North Korea. And David McCormick, a deputy White House national security adviser, said the failure to present the declaration as a formal, written document was not a setback.
In a separate discussion, McCormick said, Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao had agreed "on the path ahead" in dealing with North Korea. McCormick and White House press secretary Tony Snow said Bush and Hu had not set specific conditions to present to Pyongyang.
Bush has said that among the measures the United States would offer to entice North Korea to cooperate would be a formal declaration that the Korean War, fought more than 50 years ago between the North and South, was at an end. Such a statement never has been made.
