US Softens Demands On North Korea

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Financial Times
April 14, 2008 By Demetri Sevastopulo, in Washington
North Korea no longer needs to provide a complete declaration of its nuclear activities under a tentative deal reached with the US towards de-nuclearising the Stalinist state, according to US officials.
Pyongyang last year agreed to produce a “complete” declaration of its nuclear activities as part of the six-party agreement reached with the US, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
The US previously insisted the declaration include details about past uranium-enrichment activities and the proliferation of nuclear technology to Syria. The US has accused Pyongyang of helping Damascus build a secret nuclear reactor that Israel destroyed in a mysterious air strike last year.
After struggling for months to persuade North Korea to provide a full declaration, however, the US has decided to compromise. Christopher Hill, the US negotiator on North Korea, has reached a tentative deal under which Pyongyang would only “acknowledge” US concerns about uranium and proliferation, in a secret side-agreement.
Meanwhile, the public document would only include a “complete” declaration about its plutonium nuclear programme. Officials caution that key issues still need to be resolved, but critics have already accused the administration of making a U-turn.
Several elements need to be resolved before President George W. Bush would even consider approving the deal. US officials are preparing to return to Pyongyang, for example, to assess claims that North Korea only harvested 30kg of plutonium. Japan is also insisting North Korea account for Japanese citizens who were abducted by North Korea over several decades.
“That is part of what keeps us from saying we are at breakthrough point,” said one senior official.
“I don’t know if the president will go for it,” said a former official. “He has said ‘full and complete’ declaration and no one thinks that’s what it is – even the most ardent supporters.”
The senior official rejected the criticisms, saying people were “pole-vaulting to conclusions”. He said the final deal would provide “clarity” on North Korea’s past uranium and proliferation activities.
In the past, the Bush administration has insisted that North Korea could only be trusted if it accounted for its previous nuclear activities. A second official explained that the US had decided it was more important to focus on the plutonium programme, which produced the nuclear bomb North Korea tested in 2006, than to try to get an admission about past activities.
“Why, if the Syrian reactor is gone, do we need to have the North confess completely?” he said. “Negotiation is the art of the possible. This is a regime that is incapable of certain things, and it is incapable of doing that.”
The official said the US could “negotiate for the next 100 years trying to get these guys to fess up, or you can get them to acknowledge that they did this without them going into specifics”.
Officials said the deal would include a crucial verification mechanism to ensure Pyongyang did not engage in further nuclear activity or proliferation.
“This is not going to be an ideal agreement. That just is not doable under the circumstances,” said the official.
 
Back
Top