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Officials Advance Drafting of North Korean Deal
U.S. officials are working with their allies to prepare a document for the next round of talks on the Korean nuclear standoff, South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck said Thursday (see GSN, Nov. 26). South Korea and the United States are working with China, Japan and Russia to prepare a nonaggression guarantee for North Korea. In exchange, they hope Pyongyang would agree to abandon its nuclear weapons development, the Los Angeles Times reported. A team of experts from China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States would witness the dismantling of the nuclear program. The effort is based on an agreement signed with the Ukraine in the 1990s, according to South Korea academic Moon Chung-in. “The Ukrainian model contains a lot of the same elements that North Korea has been asked for from the United States. Although the North Koreans are calling for a bilateral treaty with the United States, this would be a multilateral guarantee,” Moon said (Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 28). Charles Pritchard, who recently resigned as a senior State Department expert on North Korea, said that Pyongyang would continue developing nuclear weapons if U.S. officials do not make a substantive offer. While some experts have said that North Korea might be biding time until a Democratic candidate defeats U.S. President George W. Bush, a North Korean official told Pritchard that Pyongyang is anticipating another four-year term for Bush. “I hope they [U.S. officials] have something far more ambitious than a statement of principles. If the U.S. position is that we can wait, then we have the wrong team,” he said (Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, Nov. 29). North Korea, meanwhile, said that it would not abandon its nuclear program without a security guarantee in hand. “The U.S. demand that the D.P.R.K. drop ‘the nuclear program first’ means that the D.P.R.K. should lay down arms and work for the U.S. as a servant. The D.P.R.K. can never accept it. It would rather die than having peace in exchange for slavery,” according to a commentary in the state-run Korean Central News Agency (Hans Greimel, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Dec. 1).
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