U.S. Wants North Korean Deal Finished Before 2009

The Bush administration would like to see North Korea dismantle its nuclear program before the president’s term expires in early 2009, Agence France-Press reported today (see GSN, July 23).

“It would be in 2008 we would really want to wrap this up,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, lead U.S. negotiator to the six-party talks, said yesterday in Washington.

“The sooner the better, I mean, from my humble perspective.  But in 2008 we would hope to wrap this up.  I hope it wouldn’t take 12 months,” he added.

North Korea has shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, but negotiators last week were unable to set a schedule for Pyongyang to declare and disable its nuclear weapons program under the February denuclearization deal. 

“Realistically speaking, if we can’t get that (second phase) going by the end of ’07, it’s going to be tough to complete it by the end of ’08, which would be target time,” Hill said.

Completion of the second phase of work could open the door for negotiations on formally ending the Korean War and on a Northeast Asia security body.

Hill indicated that North Korea could completely dismantle its weapons program in 2007, even if work begins following the next planned round of talks in September, AFP reported.

“If they want to get it done, it can be done.  I think disabling activities are not a matter of months; they’re a matter of weeks,” Hill said.

The Stalinist state’s reward — a total of 1 million tons of fuel oil or equivalent economic aid — is linked to inoperable nuclear weapons, Hill added.  Some “eleventh-hour negotiations” might be necessary to agree upon a timeline for fully disabling the North Korean nuclear weapons program, he acknowledged (P. Parameswaran, Agence France-Presse/The Raw Story, July 24).

Hill also repeated the U.S. stance that North Korea must eliminate its nuclear program and rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty before there can be discussion of delivering light-water power reactors to Pyongyang, Kyodo News reported.

“At an appropriate time, we are prepared to discuss the subject of a provision of a light-water reactor,” he said.

“We have explained that the appropriate time is when [North Korea] gets out of this dirty nuclear business that they’ve been in and returns to the NPT,” Hill added (Kyodo News/Yahoo!News, July 23).

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