Page 2 of 2 North Korea accord: Now for the hard
part By Donald Kirk
almost 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.
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