North Korea accord: Now for the hard part

By Donald Kirk

SEOUL - All sides have managed to save face in an agreement that puts off the biggest questions while promising the first halting steps toward an end to North Korea's nuclear program.

The agreement reached at the six-party talks in Beijing on Tuesday fulfills US envoy Christopher Hill's promise while in Seoul on his way to Beijing of a "first tranche" in a "step-by-step process" - and is more or less what he worked out last month with North Korea's envoy, Kim Kye-gwan, in Berlin.

The immediate question is whether North Korea will take the initial



step as signed on Tuesday afternoon in Beijing and shut down its nuclear facilities, including its 5-megawatt reactor at the nuclear complex at Yongbyon, within 60 days as specified in the agreement.

North Korea may insist on waiting until the other signatories to the agreement, the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, have come up with 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil - an "emergency" shipment that is just the first of many those countries have agreed to provide.

If North Korea does fully cooperate and disable the complex, the other five countries will pour in another 950,000 tons of heavy fuel for a grand total of 1 million tons. That's half as much as North Korea demanded, but Pyongyang is fully expected to up the ante when the time comes to talk about the huge unanswered questions.

North Korea's ultimate goal remains a massive influx of the electrical aid that was to have been supplied by the twin light-water nuclear reactors promised in the 1994 Geneva Framework Agreement.

That agreement broke down for another question that remains unanswered in Tuesday's agreement - North Korea's program for developing warheads with highly enriched uranium. Hill's predecessor, James Kelly, after visiting Pyongyang in October 2002, returned to Washington claiming that North Korea had acknowledged the program after he and members of his team showed maps and other evidence picked up by US satellites.

North Korea has strongly denied the existence of any uranium program, and the omission of any mention of it appeared to some observers as a flaw in the new deal. Until that issue is resolved, the US is not seen as likely to go along with any deal for energy aid beyond the heavy fuel promised on Tuesday.

North Korea's refusal to talk about the uranium program contrasts with its boasts of having gone back to producing warheads with plutonium at their core at Yongbyon after expelling inspectors sent by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the end of 2002.

North Korea, under the latest agreement, must agree to invite IAEA inspectors to return, giving them the right to traipse around Yongbyon as they were doing from 1994 to 2002, making certain the freeze remains in place.

The production of warheads at Yongbyon raises yet another issue - will North Korea be willing to see them destroyed under terms of the agreement, and will the IAEA inspectors be able to travel to test storage sites outside Yongbyon?

The question is critical since North Korea conducted its first underground nuclear test last October. The explosion was the equivalent of less than a kiloton of TNT, probably considerably below Pyongyang's expectations, but signs from North Korea in the run-up to Hill's meeting with Kim Kye-gwan in Berlin were that another test was likely.

Disposal of North Korea's nukes will be especially difficult since it is far from certain how many actually exist. Estimates go up to a dozen, but there has been absolutely no hard confirmation.

Hardline conservatives, notably former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, are expected to criticize the deal asalmost a sellout - a concession to North Korea's shrewd diplomacy.

Bolton, as negotiators were winding up in Beijing, appeared in television broadcasts saying that the deal sent "the wrong signal to proliferators around the world", giving the impression that US State Department negotiators were ready to capitulate. He expressed the hope that President George W Bush would turn it down - something that clearly was not going to happen, since Hill



presumably agreed to the terms of the accord with full approval from Washington.

The biggest winner may be China, since the Chinese can take credit for having written the agreement, and the Chinese host and chief delegate, Wu Dawei, read it in carefully deadpan, bureaucratic style in a live television broadcast.

The conclusion of the deal came a day after the whole show appeared on the verge of failure when Hill rejected North Korea's bargaining position on Monday and seemed ready to go home. The participants agreed to extend the talks for one more day, though, waiting for North Korea to come to somewhat more reasonable terms.

Hill, before talking resumed on Tuesday, said the document was "excellent" - clearly a personal triumph for a diplomatic exercise that had reached another high point on September 19, 2005, with agreement on a "statement of principles".

The agreement reached on Tuesday fell within the confines of that statement, which promised huge aid for North Korea in return for its giving up its nuclear program. North Korea the next day, however, said it wanted the aid before doing anything else - and then refused to return to the table after the US Treasury Department blacklisted Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macau, calling it a conduit for counterfeit US$100 bills printed in Pyongyang and a clearing house for the sale of narcotics and arms.

North Korea ever since has been demanding relief from the impact of the US action on BDA, which forced the bank to freeze $24 million in North Korean accounts while banning US firms, or firms doing business with US firms, from doing business with BDA. More important, the Treasury Department ban meant that no international financial firm anywhere in the world would have anything to do with North Korea, leaving trade with China as basically the the country's only commercial window on the world.

Although left unspecified in Tuesday's agreement, the general understanding is that the US and North Korea will also come to terms on BDA, freeing up perhaps half the $24 million and removing the ban on dealing with the bank. While the sum is small, the implications in terms of North Korea's access to international markets is all-important for the regime of Kim Jong-il.
The agreement also calls for other forms of relief that North Korea has been demanding for years, including serious US consideration of removal of North Korea from the State Department's short list of "terrorist" states - a category that includes Iran, the other power whose nuclear program is a matter of serious US concern these days.

A number of contentious issues are to be thrashed out in working-level groups agreed on Tuesday. Within 30 days, according to the agreement, negotiators will begin discussing such issues as the normalization of North Korean relations with the US and Japan. South Korea is to chair a forum on answering North Korea's energy needs, including its demand, unanswered on Tuesday, for 2 million megawatts of electrical power, while Russia will chair a forum on overall peace in Northeast Asia.

Yet another forum will address the issue of a permanent peace treaty to replace the truce that was signed in July 1953 at Panmunjom marking the end of the Korean War. North Korea, in that forum, is expected to press its demand for withdrawal of the 29,500 US troops still in South Korea - an issue that is sure to turn into an exercise in rhetoric. Since the truce was signed only by the US, North Korea and China, a sub-issue will be whether South Korea should also be a signatory to a peace treaty.

Although innumerable details remained unresolved, the participants seem ready to go ahead in a spirit of flexibility. A South Korean official, talking to South Korean reporters, indicated this spirit when he said the North could receive the heavy fuel at its own pace.

"If it wants to receive all 950,000 tons within a year, it only has to finish the disablement in a year," said the official. "If it does in two years, it will be provided with the amount in two years."

Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.

Asia Times Online :: Korea News - North Korea accord: Now for the hard part

核兵器は別問題＝北朝鮮筋

【モスクワ13日時事】タス通信によると、6カ国協議に近い北朝鮮筋は13日、核兵器は同協議で採択される合意文書とは「別問題」だと述べた。北朝鮮は既に、核保有を宣言している。　

Yahoo!ニュース - 時事通信 - 核兵器は別問題＝北朝鮮筋

安倍首相、当面は「協力」にとどめる方針

　安倍総理は、６カ国協議で合意した北朝鮮へのエネルギー支援に日本は加わらず、当面は支援に対する協力にとどめる方針を示しました。

　「共同声明の完全な実施を早期に実現するように、６者が力を合わせていく必要があるというふうに考えております」（佐々江賢一郎アジア大洋州局長）

　「エネルギーの支援はしません。エネルギーの調査等はしますよ」「日本は（６か国協議で決めた）その枠組みを進めていく上において協力はします。しかし支援はしないというのが方針です」（安倍首相）

　安倍総理はこのように述べ、今の時点では日本が北朝鮮へのエネルギー支援を分担するつもりがないことを強調しました。

　政府は合意文書に盛り込まれた北朝鮮に対する支援のうち、最初に行われる予定の５万トンの重油支援の分担には応じず、支援実施の為の調査など人的貢献にとどめる方針を固めています。しかし、６か国協議関係者の間では、核放棄が具体的に進展すれば、いずれは日本も北朝鮮支援への直接的な参加を求められるとの見方が支配的です。

　このため政府は、これまで主張してきた「拉致問題の進展」の具体的内容など、北朝鮮の今後の出方を注意深く観察しながら対応を検討していく方針です。（13日20:15）

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