Bush warns North Korea amid missile tensions

AUSTRIA: President George W. Bush warned North Korea on Wednesday against test-firing a long-range missile, while other U.S. officials rejected Pyongyang's offer of bilateral talks with Washington on the issue.

Bush, speaking in Vienna after meeting EU leaders, said North Korea must abide by international agreements."North Koreans have made agreements with us in the past and we expect them to keep their agreements," Bush said.

"For example agreements on test launches - we think it would be in the world's interest to know what they're testing, what they intend to do on their test," he told reporters.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the North wanted talks with the United States over its planned missile test, a sign Pyongyang might be ready to step back from the mounting crisis.

Washington ruled out any special talks over the issue that it, along with South Korea and Japan, says poses a grave danger to a region already worried by North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

"We know that the U.S. is concerned about our missile test launch," Yonhap quoted North Korea's deputy chief of mission at the United Nations in New York, Han Song-ryol, as saying.

"Our position is to solve this situation through discussions," Han said, while asserting Pyongyang's right to develop and test missiles.

John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, rejected the offer.

It's not a way to produce a conversation because if you acquiesce in aberrant behavior you simply encourage the repetition of it, which we're obviously not going to do," he told reporters.

In an interview with CNN, Bolton said the United States would consider a North Korean missile launch over Japan a clear threat to international peace and security and that is "something we can't accept.

Bolton urged China, Pyongyang's chief ally, to do more to persuade the isolated communist state to forgo any launch. Vienna, Thursday, Reuters