North Korea Energy Talks Begin

Negotiators from the six-party talks began a two-day meeting today on providing energy aid to North Korea as a reward for the nation’s denuclearization, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Oct. 26).

The session at the border village of Panmunjom began as a ship carrying 21,000 tons of U.S. heavy fuel oil headed toward North Korea.  Its arrival was expected later today, to be followed by an additional 29,000 tons. 

China and South Korea have already each supplied 50,000 tons of oil to the Stalinist state.

“We are gathered here to conduct the quite difficult business of providing energy and economic assistance,” said South Korean negotiator Lim Sung-nam.

North Korea has already stated what energy technology and aid it expects in exchange for shuttering its nuclear program, Lim said.  The negotiations could be complicated “primarily because we’ll be discussing extremely technical issues,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Oct. 29).

Pyongyang said it has been meeting its denuclearization pledges and hopes that the other nations — China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States — would offer reciprocal actions, the Associated Press reported.

North Korea this summer halted operations at its Yongbyon nuclear complex and has pledged by the end of the year to declare and disable its atomic program.

“The North’s basic position was that it was to begin disarmament procedures from Nov. 1 and that it has been sincerely responding to second-stage denuclearization measures such as the disablement and declaration” of its nuclear facilities,” Lim said.

“The North’s side generally expressed hopes the five other parties should also provide it with promised economic and energy aid at an appropriate time,” he said (Hyung-Jin Kim, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 29).

A report issued last week urged negotiators not to settle for shallow measures to disable the nation’s three primary nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, Reuters reported.  The plants in question are a nuclear reactor, a fuel-rod production facility and a spent fuel reprocessing site.

Negotiators apparently have had a hard time persuading Pyongyang “to carry out disablement steps that significantly damage their nuclear facilities,” according to the report by David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security.

“However, future negotiations should continue to press for greater disablement of facilities, leading to their dismantlement,” the report states.

“Nuclear weapons production facilities, nuclear weapons themselves, and any operating uranium enrichment plants and associated facilities would be expected to be disabled,” it adds.

Disablement must “go beyond simply shutting down, sealing and monitoring a facility,” Albright and Brannan wrote.  It must ensure that resuming operations at the plants would require an extensive amount of effort and time (Paul Eckert, Reuters/Yahoo!News, Oct. 29).

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