ElBaradei: Sanctions won't solve N. Korea standoff

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tuesday that sanctions alone would not resolve the standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons program. "The solution will have to address the security, economic and other concerns of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Quite often these nuclear crises underline a sense of insecurity that clearly needs to be addressed, and a sense of imbalance, economic discrimination also needs to be addressed," he told students at Tsinghua University in Beijing. ElBaradei's comments came after North Korea's top nuclear envoy Kim Kye Gwan said after meeting his US and South Korean counterparts in Beijing last week that his country would not unilaterally abandon its atomic weapons program.