A senior Bush administration official said Sunday that the United States will not hold bilateral talks with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea over the nuclear crisis.
"I know that the North Koreans would like nothing better than this to become a bilateral problem between the United States and North Korea," White House's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on "Fox News Sunday" program.
"We cannot allow the North Koreans to step back into a bilateral discussion with the United States," she said.
However, Rice said she believes that the United States "still has an opportunity through diplomacy and strong action by the neighbors, who by the way have a great deal at stake, to stop the North Koreans from this escalation that they're on."
(Xinhua News Agency February 17, 2003)
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