North Korea Demands Light-Water Reactor Before Disarmament

North Korea said today it would not give up its nuclear weapons program until the United States provided a light-water reactor for an atomic energy program, the Los Angeles Times reported (see GSN, Sept. 19).

Pyongyang yesterday signed an agreement to end its nuclear weapons program in return for energy and economic assistance, security guarantees from the United States and potential normalization of relations with Tokyo and Washington. The other five nations involved in the negotiations with North Korea — China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States — agreed to discuss providing Pyongyang with a light-water reactor for generating electricity “at an appropriate time.”

However, North Korea’s official news agency today announced that “the U.S. should not even dream of the issue of [North Korea’s] dismantlement of its nuclear deterrent before providing” a light-water reactor.

The United States dismissed North Korea’s statement.

“This is not the agreement that they signed, and we’ll give them some time to reflect,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last night.

Pyongyang’s demand is “unacceptable,” said Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura.

Some experts said North Korea’s statement did not undermine yesterday’s agreement, but would be likely to complicate the next round of talks in November.

“I don’t think it blows up the deal. What it does is underline how difficult the process remains,” said Robert Einhorn, an international security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Einhorn said the agreement contained only a vague list of shared principles, according to the Times.

“This wasn’t a big, substantive reconciliation,” he said. “This was an agreement to set aside a disagreement and move ahead with the talks.”

Thee United States should have learned from past difficulties to be more specific in any agreement with North Korea, said Toshimitsu Shigemura, a North Korea expert at Japan’s Waseda University. Pyongyang is known for adding new demands when nearing an agreement, he said.

“The other party wants to avoid a breakdown, so they can’t reject that,” Shigemura said. “The U.S. and Japan were weak.  They shouldn’t have given in, even if the negotiations broke down.”

Chinese analysts were uncommonly critical of their nation’s ally after today’s demand.

“It is very stupid for North Korea to ask to change a just-signed deal,” said Jin Linbo, Asia-Pacific director with the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing. “It will now be criticized by all parties, not just the U.S.” (Demick/Efron, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 20).

Beijing today expressed hope that all parties would meet their commitments in yesterday’s deal, Reuters reported.

“(We) believe all parties will seriously fulfill their promises with a responsible attitude,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (Reuters I, Sept. 20).

Some nuclear experts said North Korea’s demand for light-water reactors made no sense in light of the country’s chronic energy shortage and decaying power grid, Agence France-Presse reported today.

The reactors could take up to a decade to build and their output would overload the North’s circuits, said independent nuclear expert Kang Jungmin (Agence France-Presse, Sept. 20).

South Korea said it would work to bridge the differences between North Korea and the United States, Reuters reported.

“North Korea and the U.S. may push and pull over the wording of ‘appropriate time,’ but the South Korean government’s role is to mediate that in a moderate way,” said South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.

“South Korea has its own position. We are going to work to bring North Korea and the U.S. closer to our position,” said South Korea’s top envoy to the talks in Beijing, Song Min-soon (Reuters II, Sept. 20).

Both the United States and North Korea had reservations about the agreement before signing it yesterday, the New York Times reported today.

The North Korean delegation was unhappy with the text drafted by China but willing to sign, said one senior U.S. official.

“They said, ‘Here’s the text, and we’re not going to change it, and we suggest you don’t walk away,’” said the official.

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, chief U.S. negotiator, said Washington remained opposed to mentioning a light-water reactor in the agreement but that China included in anyway. The United States also opposed the ambiguous term “appropriate” to depict the timing of such a reward. Beijing, Moscow and Seoul, however, were content with that language.

Beijing, meanwhile, increased pressure on Washington by indicating that the United States would be blamed for any breakdown of the talks.

“At one point they told us that we were totally isolated on this and that they would go to the press,” the senior administration official said.

Several officials told the Times that U.S. President George W. Bush was preoccupied with other issues and that the Beijing agreement provided a way to avoid a confrontation with Pyongyang. In addition, Bush had concluded several years ago that there were no acceptable military options for fully destroying Pyongyang’s nuclear programs, according to participants involved in the discussions.

The agreement omits any mention of Washington’s accusation that the North is running a clandestine uranium enrichment program to its plutonium program (Kahn/Sanger, New York Times, Sept. 20).

Some experts have said that Pyongyang is more interested in protecting the alleged uranium program, the Times reported today.

“It’s a huge hole in the agreement,” said Art Brown, former chief CIA officer in charge of North Korea. “If they don’t acknowledge they have it — and if they have buried it in some cave — we’ll say it’s included in the deal and they’ll say there is nothing there to give up.”

U.S. intelligence and State Department officials yesterday began reviving an old plan for inspecting all of North Korea’s nuclear installations, the Times reported, but access to the country for such inspections remains to be negotiated in the coming months.

“We will need to travel throughout the country, and be given unhindered access,” said one senior Bush administration official, who said he backs yesterday’s agreement. “Can you imagine the North Koreans letting us do that?” (Sanger, New York Times, Sept. 20).

Meanwhile, Russia announced its readiness to build a nuclear energy reactor for North Korea in the wake of yesterday’s agreement, the Associated Press reported yesterday.

“We do build nuclear power stations abroad, we could do the same in North Korea,” said Federal Atomic Energy Agency chief Alexander Rumyantsev. “Everyone knows about the energy shortage in North Korea, therefore we must act quickly” (Associated Press/ExpressIndia.com, Sept. 19).

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