The Associated Press Thu, Mar 20, 2008 (12:42 p.m.)
North Korea is not prepared to hand over a promised list detailing all its nuclear efforts, the chief U.S. negotiator for disarmament talks said Wednesday.
The communist nation must act soon if international talks are to move ahead on efforts to rid the North of nuclear weapons by year's end, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters.
"There's a great deal on the table that is in their interest, but they have to understand that we cannot, at the end of the day, permit them to hold on to nuclear material," Hill said. "I've said it to them 50 times, and I'll be happy to say it another 50 times."
Hill said he is trying to make North Korea understand that negotiators cannot accept a declaration that does not address U.S. claims of a secret uranium enrichment program and past nuclear proliferation. "It is not politically sustainable," said Hill, who met last week with his North Korean counterpart, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan.
North Korea denies it ran a secret uranium program.
In October, the North promised to lay out its long history of nuclear weapons development in a formal declaration by the end of 2007, a step toward eventually giving up its atomic bombs and the means to make them. In exchange, North Korea was to receive aid and political concessions, including its removal from U.S. terrorism and sanctions blacklists.
North Korea says it gave the U.S. a list of its nuclear programs in November. The Bush administration says it never received a "complete and correct" list.
Hill said the timing and format of how North Korea presents its declaration are not problems in the talks, which also include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
The problem, he said, is that North Korea refuses to hand over a complete list. "They would rather have one that misses a few elements," he said. "We need to have transparency" on all the North's nuclear activities.
Some powerful Democrats are attempting to make it clear to North Korean leaders that dragging their feet on nuclear disarmament will not be productive.
Having promised to shut down facilities used to produce nuclear weapons, North Korea is refusing to hold to an agreed-upon schedule to do so. That pact was made during talks involving North and South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the United States.
A few thoughtful Democrat leaders worry that the North Koreans may think that, by delaying, they can get a better deal out of the next U.S. president, who may be a Democrat.
William Perry, who served as defense secretary during the Clinton administration, traveled to North Korea this month to disabuse leaders there of that notion. If anything, the next president may take a more harsh stance, Perry told the North Koreans.
Perry and other Democrats behind the warning are to be commended for taking a nonpartisan approach to a serious concern.
But North Korea needs to hear it directly from the two Democrat contenders for president, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Both of them should go on record unequivocally in supporting the current disarmament agreement ― and insisting that North Korea comply with it.
