Global Security Newswire

More than 6,000 spent fuel rods have been extracted from North Korea's plutonium-producing reactor as part of the nation's 2007 denuclearization agreement, the Korea Times reported yesterday (see GSN, March 12).

The removed rods account for roughly three-fourths of the 8,000 that at one point were within the facility, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Pyongyang, though, appears to have slowed the rate of removal during the latest deadlock in the nuclear negotiations, a CRS report says. Talks stalled after North Korea denied the U.S. assertion that it had agreed to allow collection of nuclear samples as part of a program to verify the nation's atomic activities and holdings.

North Korea agreed to 11 measures for disablement of the reactor at its Yongbyon nuclear complex as part of an agreement under which it would receive economic, diplomatic and security benefits from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. The regime would need three to four months to reprocess the fuel rods if it sought to pull out of the denuclearization deal, the CRS report said (Jung Sung-ki, Korea Times, March 15).

Meanwhile, former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday dismissed the nuclear negotiations with North Korea, Agence France-Presse reported.

"I didn't think the North Koreans were going to keep their end of the bargain in terms of what they agreed to, and they didn't," he told CNN.

Cheney also said that diplomat Christopher Hill, who led the Bush administration's team at the nuclear talks, is a poor choice to become ambassador to Iraq.

"He's not the man I would have picked for that post. He doesn't have any experience in the region. He's never served in that part of the world before. He doesn't speak the language," Cheney said (Jitendra Joshi, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, March 15).

The Obama administration on Friday rejected Republican criticism of Hill's selection, the Associated Press reported.

"The president believes he's got the right man for the job," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.): "Chris Hill is a strong, skilled and effective negotiator and an accomplished career foreign service officer who demonstrated his significant expertise in some of the most protracted and complex diplomatic challenges in the world, including those in North Korea and Bosnia."

Democrats would need support from some moderate Republican senators to establish the 60-vote majority necessary to prevent a filibuster against Hill, AP reported (Anne Flaherty, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, March 13).