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North Korea Turns Down U.S. Nuclear Proposal
The North Korean delegation to six-nation talks in Beijing yesterday officially rejected the 2004 U.S. proposal aimed at ending the nuclear standoff, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, July 27). The North Korean delegation objected to the proposal on the grounds that it was front-loaded with demands on Pyongyang, while any benefits would only accrue afterward, the U.S. official said. Negotiators from the six nations have thus far in talks mainly laid out their positions, the official said. The primary goal of the negotiations is to create a list of “agreed principles” that can be expanded later, he said. “Our concern in putting together this basket of principles is that the basket can be turned into an agreement,” he said. More complex issues, such as the sequencing of obligations and Pyongyang’s alleged uranium enrichment program, would be put off for later discussion, according to the Post (Edward Cody, Washington Post, July 28). The United States proposed in bilateral discussions with North Korean delegates today that inspections of Pyongyang’s nuclear facilities be conducted in September, Interfax reported. “The U.S. delegation has proposed reaching an agreement at the fourth round (of six-party talks) to conduct an international inspection of the North Korean nuclear facilities in September 2005,” a source was quoted as saying. “(They would) subsequently draft a plan of measures to attain the main target of the six-party negotiating process — to free the peninsula of nuclear weapons,” the source said. The U.S. Embassy could not confirm the report, AFP reported (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 28). U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill also refused to confirm the Interfax report. “I have absolutely no idea,” Hill said when asked about its accuracy. The U.S. and North Korean delegations agreed today to continue bilateral negotiating sessions, Reuters reported. A third meeting was held today. “They agreed to continue holding consultations,” said Qin Gang, spokesman for the Chinese delegation (Lim/Beck, Reuters, July 28). The decision to hold one-on-one talks with North Korea is a significant shift in U.S. policy since the last round of negotiations, the Washington Post reported. “Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice has implemented a subtle but important shift in U.S. policy,” said Joseph Cirincione, director of nonproliferation policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Clearly, we are now in a period of give-and-take and genuine negotiations.” For example, Undersecretary of State Hill brokered a deal for the resumption of talks during a private three-hour dinner this month in Beijing with his North Korean counterpart, according to the Post, and has held several bilateral meetings with North Korean negotiators since then. The Bush administration, however, has rejected talk of a policy change. “This was not a negotiating session,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, referring to Monday’s breakout session between the North Korean and U.S. delegations at the talks. “We have in the past met with the North Koreans in the context of the six-party talks.” Experts said, however, that the administration’s approach is drastically different from that practiced in the first term. “If any of this had taken place under Bush I, people would have been lined up and shot,” said Charles Pritchard, who served as senior U.S. specialist for North Korean talks until resigning in August 2003. Undersecretary of State James Kelly, the top U.S. negotiator with North Korea during the first Bush term, had a delegation that included officials from other U.S. agencies who were dubious of the negotiations and was hampered by administration insistence that he call Washington repeatedly for instructions, the Post reported. “We were looking, at least to my mind, like something out of the old Soviet days, where there were watchers watching the watchers who were watching the principals,” former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told CNN this week (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, July 28). All parties today focused on creating the list of agreed principles, according to Reuters. “When we start drafting, we want to make sure that the drafting becomes the easy part and that there is already a consensus on how to proceed,” Hill said (Reuters, July 28). Pyongyang, meanwhile, has reportedly informed China that its announcement in February that it has nuclear bombs meant it had mastered technology for a nuclear detonator, a diplomatic source close to the talks told Interfax. In addition, North Korea said it has thus far avoided building up a nuclear arsenal, but that it would begin do so if the standoff with the United States was not resolved to its liking, according to the source (Stephanie Hoo, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 28). Washington yesterday said it remained convinced North Korea is pursuing a uranium enrichment program, AFP reported. “We’ve talked about this issue in the past in public, and our view is that North Korea would need to give up all of its nuclear programs. That would include plutonium, as well as highly enriched uranium. That still stands,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, July 27). Elsewhere, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon and met today with his North Korean counterpart, Paek Nam Sun, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Laos, Reuters reported. It was the third ever meeting between the two men. “We are trying to make real progress in the six-party talks,” Paek said. Seoul was also awaiting a response on its energy aid offer to Pyongyang, Ban said yesterday (Jon Herskovitz, Reuters, July 28).
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