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Time out for North Korea
After nearly two weeks of
heated negotiations, the key sticking point at the
six-party talks involving China, Japan, Russia,
the United States, and North and South Korea
boiled down to whether North Korea should be
allowed to run nuclear programs for peaceful
energy use.
US Assistant Secretary of
State Christopher Hill said Washington cannot
accept North Korea's insistence on having atomic
reactors for energy.
"In the last few
days, it began to emerge that the problem with
reaching an agreement was not just the issue of
the desire to retain their right to develop
commercial - or so-called peaceful - (nuclear)
energy. But also, they began to insist on a
light-water reactor," Hill told reporters.
The negotiators are due to return to talks
August 29 after a break of three weeks.
Correspondents say it is unclear how to move
forward on the three-year standoff with North
Korea, which has said once again that it is making
nuclear weapons.
Hill said there is only
one way to move forward. "I hope that they will
use this recess time wisely [and] will go back and
think hard and long about what to do," he said.
"And come back in this same month of August ready
to make that decision to do away with its
[nuclear] weapons and to reach agreement with the
rest of us on the text of this agreement."
But deputy Foreign Minister Kim Kye-Gwan,
the chief negotiator for North Korea, said it is
the United States that must reconsider its
position toward the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea (DPRK). "During the recess period, the
United States should change their policy saying
that the DPRK is not entitled to any nuclear
program," Kim said.
North Korea needed
nuclear weapons to protect itself from the threat
of a nuclear attack by the United States, he said.
His country also wanted guarantees that there were
no nuclear weapons in South Korea, he added.
"Our counterpart requires us to give up
the right to have peaceful use of nuclear power,"
Kim said. "The United States should guarantee it
won't attack us with nuclear weapons and provide
legal and systematic guarantees. South Korea
should get rid of the nuclear umbrella and South
Korea should guarantee it has no nuclear weapons
and also should guarantee that no nation will
provide them with nuclear weapons."
The
recess of the six-party talks means the meetings
have fallen short of the original plan to draft a
joint agreement setting out how North Korea would
abandon nuclear weapons and what it would get in
return.
A Japanese government official
said the other five nations in the talks had
agreed that now was not the time for Pyongyang to
insist on the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
"Efforts made by each country should not be
wasted," said Japan's chief negotiator, Kenichiro
Sasae. "And it is important to bring such efforts
to the next stage."
The construction of
two light-water nuclear reactors for power-starved
North Korea had been part of a 1994 agreement
between Pyongyang and the United States.
Under that deal, Pyongyang committed to
freezing and eventually dismantling its
graphite-moderated nuclear reactors. Those
reactors can produce weapons-grade nuclear
material more easily than light-water nuclear
reactors.
But the project was suspended in
October 2003 - a year after the current crisis
began - when the United States said North Korea
had a secret uranium-enrichment program.
The suspension of that project prompted
North Korea to withdraw from the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, an arms control and
reduction agreement signed in 1968 and involving
190 countries. Pyongyang later confirmed that it
had developed nuclear weapons.
Copyright (c) 2005, RFE/RL Inc.
Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty,
1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036 |
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