N Korea nuke talks on track but dangers loom
By Seo Hyun-jin
Little is expected from opening meetings of the fifth round of six-party talks
on halting North Korea's nuclear weapons development, which open Wednesday in
Beijing.
According to South Korean government officials, the six countries will not do
much more than exchange positions regarding a schedule of implementation stages
relating to September's joint agreement for defusing the prolonged nuclear
tension, so they can have full-fledged consultations in follow-up meetings,
hopefully this year.
The fourth-round of talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, China,
Japan and Russia ended September 19 with a joint
statement in which Pyongyang promised to dismantle its nuclear program in
return for economic aid, diplomatic recognition from the other countries and
other benefits.
This week's meetings are not expected to yield concrete implementation plans as
the countries remain far apart over the sequence for nuclear dismantlement and
the compensation package as well as the North's demand for a light-water
civilian nuclear reactor.
Also, time for the meetings will be limited as the talks will recess to allow
some of the negotiators to prepare for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
summit in South Korea next week. Observers say they would regard the meetings
as successful if the six parties simply agreed on how to approach the
implementation issue.
Working out coordinated steps
The six nations should be able to coordinate steps to implement their September
agreement. The joint statement in the fourth round of talks was the first
formal agreement of any kind over the course of the three-year nuclear
standoff, but it constitutes only the beginning of a long and bumpy road to
resolve the unabated tension between Pyongyang and Washington.
"In the first stage of the fifth round, participating countries will focus on
finding out their ideas on implementation plans and how flexible their
positions are, and then in the second phase we will engage in specific
negotiations to lay the groundwork for detailed measures," South Korea's chief
negotiator, Song Min-soon, said at a news conference last week.
The talks need to be divided into stages because some of the negotiators will
need to accompany their countries' leaders to the APEC summit in South Korea's
city of Busan November 18-19, said Song, South Korea's deputy foreign minister.
Following the fourth round of talks, the six nations held a series of bilateral
meetings to fine-tune their positions, but they continue to remain divided on
details.
"The countries have much in common in the direction and overall framework for
action plans, but they differ much on specific measures," another high-ranking
government official in Seoul said on condition of anonymity. "It will take
considerable time to agree on detailed plans."
South Korea has worked on its own proposals to facilitate the discussions, and
is believed to prefer a comprehensive plan, which lays out all phases regarding
the North's nuclear dismantlement and responding measures from the other
countries.
Experts say the roadmap may set timelines for North Korea to report, freeze,
verify and dismantle its nuclear program and return to the nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), with each step being reciprocated by the other
countries' economic assistance and normalization of relations with the North.
It is also possible that the parties could categorize action plans based on
individual agenda issues such as nuclear dismantlement, diplomatic
normalization and a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, the experts said.
Joseph DeTrani, special US envoy to the six-party talks, told reporters in
Washington last week that the mechanism for implementing the accord could
comprise working groups looking into details of the agreement.
But the discussions may hit a snag if the two main antagonists - the United
States and North Korea - continue to be embroiled in disputes over thorny
issues on which they have locked horns the last three years.
US-North confrontation
The major bone of contention for upcoming negotiations will occur when the
countries discuss providing a light-water nuclear reactor to North Korea and
whether the North possesses a highly enriched uranium program. The two issues
could paralyze the talks when the negotiators try to come up with action plans.
In the September 19 joint statement, the five nations circumvented the North's
demand for a light-water reactor, stipulating they will discuss the issue "at
an appropriate time". But the United States and North Korea have confronted one
another over the issue since the agreement was completed. The two countries
almost immediately produced conflicting opinions on what they interpreted as an
appropriate time.
North Korea demands a light-water reactor for power generation as a
precondition for any substantial steps to abandon its nuclear weapons
development. The US insists the North should act first.
The timing for discussing the reactor will be "when the North gets rid of its
nuclear weapons and all of its existing programs and [has] gotten back into the
NPT with good standing with IAEA safeguards," the US chief negotiator,
Christopher Hill, said after the September talks.
One diplomatic expert predicts the reactor issue may become a major stumbling
block at the talks. "The United States passed the hot potato to the fifth round
as it just patched it up with the transitional pledge in the fourth round,"
Professor Koh Yu-hwa of Dongguk University in Seoul told Asia Times Online.
"They couldn't let the reactor issue rupture the fourth round even if they
didn't want to permit the North's peaceful use of nuclear power or provision of
a light-water reactor amid opposition from US hardliners."
Another tricky issue is the North's highly enriched uranium program, which
sparked the nuclear standoff in October 2002. The issue seemed muted in the
fourth round of talks, but it can emerge as a main issue in future negotiations
because Washington may insist the uranium program should be included in the
list of the North's nuclear programs to be dismantled.
Pyongyang has recently reiterated its claims that Washington is fabricating the
uranium story and that North Korea does not have such a program. The nuclear
issue flared up three years ago when James Kelly, then the US assistant
secretary of state, said the North admitted to having a uranium-based nuclear
program during his visit to Pyongyang. The North has consistently denied the
charges.
Roles of other countries
Despite the North-US confrontation, however, there is some cautious optimism
that the two countries can demonstrate some flexibility and pragmatism with the
help of diplomatic efforts by the other four nations. Seoul is set to make
every effort to persuade Pyongyang and Washington not to make unilateral claims
regarding the reactor provision or about verification of the North's nuclear
facilities, officials said.
China, for its part, has geared up its diplomacy to induce flexible attitudes
from North Korea. Chinese President Hu Jintao held a summit with North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang in late October and urged the North to remain
committed to the six-party talks.
The talks in the past have been shadowed by side issues. This time, for
instance, it remains to be seen whether Japan can be flexible on the issue of
North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens decades ago, a sensitive issue
that has blocked the two countries from forging diplomatic ties. No agreement
was reached when the countries held two-day talks last week to discuss the
kidnappings and reparations for Japan's colonial rule of Korea between 1910 and
1945.
But some experts suggest that Japan may want to move forward in its relations
with North Korea as Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, spurred by his
party's landslide win in the September general election, has a strong will to
improve bilateral ties before his term ends in September next year.
Seo Hyun-jin is a South Korean journalist specializing in diplomatic
relations and North-South unification issues, and she is currently conducting
research on international relations in the University of Leeds, England.
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