Progress Reported at North Korea Negotiations

Negotiators at the latest round of six-party talks have made progress on determining the measures North Korea would take to disable its nuclear program this year, lead U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said today (see GSN, Sept. 26).

“Basically, we’ve agreed on most of the disablement measures,” Hill said following the first day of the planned four-day session in Beijing.  “We made some proposals for additional measures that we thought might be doable and we’ll see if is possible.”

A February denuclearization deal calls for Pyongyang to receive a total of 1 million tons of fuel oil, along with security and diplomatic benefits, for fully shuttering its nuclear program.

Hill said negotiators plan to work tomorrow on a declaration addressing details of the disablement plan, following a briefing from experts who visited North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex this month, Bloomberg reported.

The document “would be a road map for the rest of this calendar year,” Hill said.  “The key for us would be the disablement steps that would be agreed to and the declaration” of North Korea’s entire nuclear operations.

U.S. suspicions that North Korea is operating a highly enriched uranium program alongside its known plutonium weapons effort are expected to be discussed at this week’s meeting.  The matter could be included “in the first phase” of a potential two-part declaration, Hill said.

“We’re going to have more discussion on whether we’re going to try to do this in one big declaration or there would be a second declaration, as was proposed by one party today,” he said (Heejin Koo, Bloomberg, Sept. 27).

The top North Korean negotiator pledged yesterday that there would be notable progress at this week’s meeting, Agence France-Presse reported.

“We have agreed not to disappoint you by producing a result out of the six-party talks,” Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan told reporters following a 90-minute meeting with Hill.

“If we can be successful by the end of this year in getting this disabling and full declaration, we can then move on to what I hope to be the final phase next year, which is the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Hill said (Jun Kwanwoo, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Sept. 27).

South Korean negotiator Chun Young-woo said success at this week’s talks could serve to reduce fears that Pyongyang is aiding other countries’ nuclear programs, the Associated Press reported (see related GSN story, today).

“The surest and most fundamental solution” to the reports is to “achieve denuclearization through the six-party talks as soon as possible,” he said yesterday (Anita Chang, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 26).

Meanwhile, Russia said this week that it intends in November to send 50,000 tons of fuel to North Korea as part of the denuclearization deal, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.  Pyongyang has already received 50,000 tons from South Korea, while China is shipping fuel this month (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Sept. 26).

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