Hill Presses North Korea for Nuclear Disclosure

The United States pressed North Korea yesterday to fully describe its nuclear activities as part of a once-promising denuclearization agreement that has slowed considerably in recent months, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, March 18).

The agreement calls for Pyongyang to provide complete disclosure of its past and present nuclear programs, but the United States has rejected a 2007 submission as being incomplete.  U.S. officials have suspected that North Korea has a uranium enrichment program and has assisted Syrian nuclear ambitions, both topics that the Stalinist state has not acknowledged.

“The really problematic element is we don’t have a commitment from the D.P.R.K. to provide a complete and correct declaration,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters yesterday in Washington.  “They would rather have one that misses a few elements — that is rather incomplete.”

Hill promised to deliver on U.S. parts of the deal — such as removing North Korea from an official list of terrorist-sponsoring nations — once Pyongyang submits a declaration that is acceptable to the United States.

“I certainly would like to see it done — even this month, in March,” he said (Kyodo News, March 19)

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