Page 1 of
2 Down to the wire in
Korea By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - The sense of optimism among
Americans about the prospects for North Korea
giving up its nuclear program was almost
infectious.
First there was the chief US
envoy, Christopher Hill, saying the question of
North Korea's funds in Macau's Banco Delta Asia
(BDA) was "really resolved", and then there was
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson saying the
North Koreans could shut
down
their nuclear reactor "in a few days".
As
this weekend's "deadline" for shutting down the
nuclear reactor edged near, however, confidence
faded into questions of when or whether the North
Koreans would do it - and whether the deadline had
any real meaning.
Hill seemed less than
enthusiastic about fudging, saying, "I don't want
to get into extending the deadline," but the
Americans held out the distinct hope that North
Korea would at least accept inspectors from the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as a
start on living up to their word.
While
the North Koreans showed no sign of hitting the
off switch on the reactor by Saturday, Richardson
gave the impression the IAEA inspectors could go
in quickly, revisiting the site from which they
were expelled at the end of 2002 after the
breakdown of the 1994 agreement.
"We are
looking for the IAEA officials to start drafting
documents to shut down the reactor," he said,
claiming North Korea's chief negotiator, Kim
Kye-gwan, had said his government "upon resolution
of the bank transfer issue the next day would
invite IAEA officials".
Then "hopefully",
said Richardson, who has been to North Korea half
a dozen times in recent years, slightly qualifying
this optimistic view, "that will happen".
Just what will really happen next, though,
is far from clear. South Korea's Yonhap news
agency described the deal as "on the verge of
being crippled" after the North responded with
stony silence to declarations by Hill and
Richardson that its agents were free to draw their
funds from the bank.
North Korea did not
appear to be in any rush. A Foreign Ministry
spokesman, breaking the silence on Friday, said
that a "financial institution would confirm soon
whether the measure" de-freezing the funds was
"valid", after which the government would live up
to the agreement. There was no clue, though, as to
when to expect confirmation.
South Korean
Foreign Minister Song Min-soon was anxious to play
down the significance of the North's meeting the
deadline set by the six-party agreement of
February 13 under which it was supposed to
complete "the first phase" - the shutdown of the
reactor - within 60 days.
What counted, he
said, was "whether we can firmly implement the
measures and move on to the next phase".
Song was even more emphatic during a
breakfast with Korean journalists. "All the
parties have an intention to carry out the
agreement," he was quoted as saying. "It's
important not to be bound by to the date but to
carry out the steps in a stable way."
The
trouble, as Yonhap noted, was that "a missed
deadline would inevitably lead to a delay" in the
second phase of the February agreement. That's the
period in which North Korea is supposed to list -
and then disable - all its nuclear facilities.
North Korea under the agreement is to receive
50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel from South Korea just
for shutting down the reactor and then 950,000
tonnes as it does away with its whole program.
Analysts here believed North Korea would
go on bargaining. "There are many pitfalls," said
Park Joong-song, research fellow at the Institute
of Foreign Affairs and National Security. "They
will make sure they receive everything before they
shut down their facility."
Both Hill and
Richardson shrugged off a report that North Korea
might again play its usual delaying tactics by
suggesting that it would take another 30 days to
switch off the 5-megawatt reactor at its nuclear
complex at Yongbyon, 90 kilometers north of
Pyongyang.
No way should it take that
long, said Richardson, putting on a show of solemn
determination after four days meeting with senior
officials in Pyongyang. "I believe that is too
much time," he said, recounting one of several
meetings with North Koreans. "You don't need 30
days to shut down a reactor."
Richardson
insisted the US Treasury Department had removed
all possible barriers to the recovery by North
Korea of the $25 million frozen since September
2005. It was then that the Treasury Department
said North Korea had been using the bank as a
conduit for US$100 "supernotes" counterfeited in
Pyongyang and
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