North Korea Accepts Terms for Nuclear Verification

The latest round of six-party talks ended Saturday with agreement on general terms for verifying North Korean denuclearization, the New York Times reported (see GSN, July 11).

Pyongyang pledged to allow inspectors to examine nuclear facilities, study documents and meet with technical staff members.  It accepted the involvement of the International Atomic Energy Agency in the process.

North Korea also agreed to complete disabling its Yongbyon nuclear complex by Nov. 1, according to excerpts of a communique made public by China, which hosted the negotiations.

However, the agreement does not address details of the verification effort or describe the access inspectors would receive to conduct their work.  It also does not set a schedule for North Korea to relinquish its nuclear arsenal.

Talks on filling in some of the gaps on verification are expected to begin in a matter of weeks.

“We would like the [verification] protocol to be reached within 45 days and secondly to begin the verification within 45 days,” said Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, lead U.S. envoy to the negotiations.  “We’re anticipating that, and we don’t see any obstacles to getting that done.”

South Korean negotiator Kim Sook expressed more concerns about the process.

“I am not optimistic at all about what’s ahead, especially as implementing the verification guideline is a difficult job where we need to coordinate the different positions and interests of the six parties,” he said.

The six nations — China, Japan, Russia, the United States and both Koreas — have spent years to reach this point in the denuclearization effort.  Under a 2007 agreement, Pyongyang agreed to give up its nuclear operations in exchange for a host of concessions from the other nations.  The process stumbled this year after North Korea missed the Dec. 31 deadline to issue a mandatory accounting of its nuclear programs.  The regime last month submitted the declaration — which focused almost entirely on plutonium operations, largely skirting the issues of uranium enrichment and nuclear proliferation — and demolished the reactor cooling tower at Yongbyon.

Negotiators intend to “continue to address uranium enrichment,” Hill said after the group’s first full meeting in nine months.

Russia and the United States agreed this weekend to provide the remainder of 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil promised in the denuclearization agreement.  They will also work to provide North Korea with other economic assistance, as China and South Korea look to finalize agreements in other assistance areas.

Japan to date has refused to provide assistance to North Korea, saying the Stalinist state must first resolve the issue of its abduction of Japanese citizens.  Tokyo said in the latest agreement that it would supply assistance “as soon as possible when the environment is in place” (Yardley/Hooker, New York Times, July 13).

The process is intended to end with full North Korean nuclear disarmament, though experts question whether the regime is willing to give up its arsenal.  Pyongyang is believed to have produced enough plutonium for use in several weapons and detonated one bomb in October 2006 (Edward Cody, Washington Post, July 13).

North Korea must act honestly if it wants to receive the promised rewards for giving up its nuclear sector, Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said yesterday.

“Sanctions are something that can be lifted and imposed again,” he said.

“What I want to tell the North Korean people is that they had better not underestimate or insult the United States much,” Komura added.  “It is a big mistake if they regard it as a profit when they get what they want, and get away without delivering on what they have promised” (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, July 13).

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