U.S. receives response to Bush N. Korea letter

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush said on Friday North Korean leader Kim Jong-il could get his attention by fully disclosing Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and proliferation activities.

In the latest unusually direct communication between North Korea and the United States, Pyongyang's representative to the United Nations called a State Department official on Wednesday to relay a response from Kim to a letter Bush wrote this month.

The letter was Bush's first direct appeal to Kim. In it, he urged North Korea to keep its promise to reveal all nuclear programs. Bush famously called North Korea part of an "axis of evil" and once said that he loathed Kim.

"I got his attention with a letter and he can get my attention by fully disclosing his programs, including any plutonium he may have processed and converted, into whatever he's used it for. We just need to know," Bush told reporters after meeting with his Cabinet.

"As well, he can get our attention by fully disclosing his proliferation activities," Bush said.

North Korea told the United States in its message it would live up to its obligations under a deal to abandon its nuclear arms programs and expected Washington to keep its end of the bargain, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He paraphrased the North Korean response as: "we'll live up to our side and hope you'll live up to your side."

Another official said the gist of the brief verbal communication from North Korea was "we all want to live up to the six-party agreement."

Regardless of the exact language in the North Korean reply, U.S. diplomats and analysts doubt that the declaration will come by the end of the year and they are uncertain how complete it will be.

"There is scepticism that North Korea will really come clean," said Heritage Foundation analyst Bruce Klingner.

North Korea, which conducted a nuclear test in 2006, has agreed to provide a "complete and correct" declaration of its nuclear programs by the end of the year.

Pyongyang has also pledged to disable its main nuclear complex and declare all of its nuclear activities in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives.

The United States and others involved in the six-party talks -- Russia, Japan, China and South Korea -- "agree that there's a way forward for ... Kim Jong-il, and an important step is a full declaration of programs, materials that may have been developed to create weapons, as well as the proliferation activities of the regime," Bush said.

If Pyongyang gives a full accounting, the Bush administration is expected to drop it from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, which imposes economic and other sanctions on the secretive, communist state.