U.S. Might Pull North Korea From Terror List

The United States could drop North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terror in exchange for continued moves toward denuclearization, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 24).

Rice left open the possibility that the United States could offer the incentive to North Korea, lifting various U.S. sanctions imposed on the Stalinist state, without first forcing Pyongyang to account for all Japanese citizens it has abducted over past decades.  Such a move could anger Japan and U.S. conservatives, AP reported.

“I don't think that we want to get into a situation in which we have locked all of the steps that we might take with the North Koreans and lock them into a certain sequence with other steps that we think need to be taken,” Rice said.

“We have to be able to use whatever incentives we have that are appropriate to the stage at which we are with the North Koreans,” she added.

Christopher Hill, the senior U.S. nuclear envoy to North Korea, has said that a deal reached in 2005 by the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia could potentially allow North Korea to be removed from the U.S. terrorism list before it completely disables all of its nuclear programs (Mohammed/Pleming, Reuters I, Sept. 24).

Meanwhile, top North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan traveled to China today to resume six-party disarmament talks on Thursday, the Associated Press reported.

“During this round of talks, if we can agree on measures to implement what we have already reached a consensus on, then we can proceed with the process,” Kim said upon arriving in Beijing (Associated Press/Live-PR.com, Sept. 25).

“If we fail to come to an agreement we will go back to where we started,” Reuters reported him saying.

However, a South Korean diplomat warned that the talks are not expected to end in a final agreement because of several issues that remain unresolved as well as lingering allegations that North Korea provided nuclear assistance to Syria.

“The closure of Yongbyon wasn’t the key to this dispute.  It was the prelude to resolving the key issues,” said Zhang Liangui of Beijing’s Central Party School.

“The key will be whether North Korea will agree to revealing its nuclear weapons in the declaration and how it will explain its uranium enrichment activities,” he said (Chris Buckley, Reuters II/Washington Post, Sept. 25).

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