Experts Praise U.S., North Korean Attitudes at Nuclear Talks

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Two prominent experts yesterday declared the most recent multilateral negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear program a success and a cause for optimism that a final deal could be reached, despite a U.S.-North Korean stalemate that hindered chances for an agreement and prompted a recess in discussions (see GSN, Aug. 11).

Negotiators from Washington and Pyongyang appeared committed to serious talks on eliminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, according to Charles Pritchard, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, and James Walsh, executive director of Harvard’s Managing the Atom Project.

“There was an open concern about whether the U.S. was serious … and there were real concerns about whether the North Koreans were serious,” Walsh said. “And my sense out of this first round is that both parties, both sides come away with a view that there is something serious here.”

Pritchard, a prominent critic of the administration’s previous efforts since resigning as President George W. Bush’s top negotiator in 2003, called the recent negotiations “a resounding success.”

Pritchard said the North Koreans were “engaged” throughout the negotiations and attributed that to the “the professional approach” of Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, lead U.S. envoy to the six-party talks.

The North Korean negotiators “also conducted themselves professionally,” Walsh said. He and Pritchard spoke at an event sponsored by the Brookings Institution. 

The 13-day talks ended Sunday with a “recess,” after North Korea insisted that any deal must include helping the country obtain a light-water nuclear reactor for civil energy production. The U.S. position is that North Korea should not conduct any nuclear program following a deal and that other forms of energy would be provided to the country.

Talks are scheduled to resume the week of Aug. 29.

Both experts said they had noted signs the Bush administration has developed a stronger commitment to negotiating a settlement, citing in particular face-to-face communications between negotiators in recent months and an absence of derogatory rhetoric toward the North Korean government.

Senior administration officials realized their previous approach was leading to “failure,” and “decided to change direction,” Pritchard said.

“What you saw was an administration that began to control the rhetoric,” he said.

Pritchard said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “wants to succeed” and that Hill “has the instinct of a professional negotiator to engage, to look for ways around problems, and to seek solutions and to support the policies of the administration as he’s been given them and to influence the development of those policies.”

Pritchard and Walsh suggested the North Korean leadership also has shown recent signs it is truly willing to negotiate the elimination of its nuclear weapons capabilities.

They noted a previously reported account of a June 17 meeting between leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, in which Kim said that the dying wish of his father, Kim Il-Sung, was for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.

Kim at that meeting reportedly also said North Korea was willing as part of a deal to return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, from which it withdrew in 2002, and be subject to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

Walsh, who visited North Korea last year, said officials there repeatedly said that Kim had made a “brave strategic decision” to have a new relationship with the United States, to put aside 100 years of enmity, and eventually to abandon nuclear weapons as part of a new relationship.

Pritchard said a desire to maintain good relations with China also was a key reason North Korea returned to the talks more than a year after the previous round of negotiations.

Both experts acknowledged, though, that any deal faces numerous remaining, such as the U.S. demand that North Korea admit to having an alleged highly enriched uranium program and Pyongyang’s insistence that it be allowed to pursue a peaceful nuclear energy program.

Pritchard said the United States and North Korea are “diametrically opposed” on whether Pyongyang should be allowed to operate civilian nuclear power plants in the future.

He said the administration should not allow the issue to undo a possible agreement. “That is not, in my opinion, an essential element, a core element of what is important to the United States,” he said.

“Putting that in a bundle of [mutually agreed] principles up front is in fact extraordinarily difficult, it invites the North Koreans not only to dig in their heels but to command a proactive statement guaranteeing their right at the beginning of this,” Pritchard said.

Walsh said allowing North Korea to have a light-water reactor program should not necessarily be a great U.S. security concern.

“Light-water reactors are not big plutonium producers. And as long as they import the fuel rather than enrich it themselves and return the spent waste, then from a proliferation standpoint the risk isn’t zero but it’s very small,” he said.

“I’d be surprised if this ends up being a deal killer,” he said.

Where the money would come from to fund such a reactor, however, could be a problem.  Hill at a press conference this week said none of the six parties have said they would pay for such a project.

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.