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U.S. Has Moderate Expectations for Next Round of North Korea Nuclear Disarmament Talks
A senior U.S. official said yesterday that an upcoming session of six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program could be relatively brief yet productive (see GSN, Nov. 4). The official said Pyongyang could submit a plan for dismantlement at the negotiations scheduled to begin Wednesday. “If the North Korean government arrives at the table and says, ‘here is our plan for dismantling our nuclear programs, and our plan for a nuclear-free peninsula,’ and that is on its face acceptable to all the other governments, then clearly that would merit further and intensive discussions,” he said. “We will see if it happens,” the official added (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Nov. 3). The State Department, however, announced yesterday that Washington has limited expectations for next week’s meeting, the Associated Press reported. Department spokesman Sean McCormack said next week’s discussion on specifically how to end Pyongyang’s nuclear program “will really be, I think, the beginning of that conversation. I expect that conversation to continue on into the next round” (Barry Schweid, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Nov. 3). Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing today expressed his belief that there would be progress at next week’s negotiations, AFP reported. “We have confidence that thanks to the patient and flexible efforts of the various parties, the six-party talks will be carried forward, despite that we are quite sure that some problems will be unavoidable,” Li said. He added that the high level of coffee consumption by delegates at the last round of talks was an indication of “difficulties along the way” in talks. “(We calculated that it) added up to 2,500 cappuccinos (coffees) consumed by all the participants and staff members,” Li said. “Another estimate put it at 4,000 cappuccinos, all these cappuccinos were of course at my cost and were imported from EU countries,” he said. Li predicted lower caffeine consumption at next week’s meeting (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Nov. 4). Meanwhile, Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency head Alexander Rumyantsev said Moscow was willing to participate in building light-water reactors in North Korea, ITAR-Tass reported today. “If North Korea rejoins the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and asks us for help with building a light-water reactor, why not participate in this,” Rumyantsev said. He added that such construction was likely to be undertaken by “a major international consortium” (ITAR-Tass/BBC Monitoring, Nov. 4).
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