In last week’s talks in Beijing, North Korea offered to suspend missile tests and exports and to dismantle its nuclear development program, but only after the United States meets a long list of demands, according to a briefing given by Chinese officials to Western diplomats in Beijing yesterday (see GSN, April 28).

“The Chinese seemed to think this was a significant offer,” said one diplomat who agreed with Beijing.  “The briefing certainly gave us the impression that North Korea came to the table with a pretty significant proposal,” the diplomat added.

Pyongyang’s list of demands included the completion of light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea and full diplomatic relations with Washington and Tokyo.  After the United States completed its end of the deal, North Korea would announce its willingness to abandon its nuclear programs.

“It basically listed everything they have ever asked for,” said a senior U.S. State Department official.

China may have provided yesterday’s briefing to counter U.S. reports that last week’s meetings with U.S, North Korean and Chinese officials had been a failure, the Washington Post reported (Pomfret/Kessler, Washington Post, April 29).

North Korea also demand economic aid, in part through the United States permitting Pyongyang to participate in international financial institutions and to receive foreign investment, the Baltimore Sun reported (Mark Matthews, Baltimore Sun, April 29).

In what might be a significant concession, Pyongyang announced that it would consider multilateral talks with its regional neighbors, according to a European diplomat.  North Korea has previously insisted on face-to-face talks with the United States.  As part of the overall deal, North Korean officials reportedly offered to allow nuclear inspectors into the country, the Guardian reported (Borger/Watts, London Guardian, April 29).

U.S. officials said that North Korea’s request had also included oil shipments, food aid, security guarantees, energy assistance and economic concessions.

While administration officials also said that North Korea offered to dismantle its nuclear systems only after its demands are met, it was not clear if that included both its established plutonium weapons effort and the recently revealed uranium project.

U.S. Considers Proposal a “Nonstarter”

Both moderate and hawkish U.S. officials have rejected the North Korean proposal, the New York Times reported, but the two factions also favor continuing talks with Pyongyang, according to one hard-line official.  According to hard-line view, more talks would demonstrate North Korea’s impossible negotiating position, thereby reinforcing the idea that aggressive U.S. policies are necessary, the official said.

“There are some people in this administration who argue that there’s little point in talking to the North Koreans because they are always going to cheat,” another official said.  North Korea’s current proposal, however, is such a “nonstarter” that it behooves hard-liners to pursue negotiations and demonstrate Pyongyang’s intransigence, the official added  (Steven Weisman, New York Times, April 29).

While the overall package was considered unworkable, some officials said it could be a start and it was significant that North Korea put its nuclear program on the bargaining table, albeit at an exorbitant price.

“It’s not an airplane that’s going to fly, but it may have interesting parts,” said a State Department official (Matthews, Baltimore Sun).

Some analysts agreed that the steep price of nuclear dismantlement might be overshadowing the fact that an offer was made at all.

“The initial reports from the talks focused on the negative,” said Eric Heginbotham, the director of the Korea task force at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.  “This news at least indicates the North may still be interested in an agreement.  Of course it’s hard to tell if they are serious or not,” he added (Borger/Watts, London Guardian).

Denial

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday denied reports that North Korea had told the State Department March 31 that it was reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods but that State had withheld the information from the rest of the Bush administration.

“What we were told on the 31st was shared within the administration.  I’m not sure if everybody in the administration got it, but it isn’t relevant because it didn’t seem to be anything that was terribly new or different from what we had been told on a regular basis over the last several months.  It was not, in our judgment, anything that was particularly new or newsworthy,” Powell said (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, April 29).

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