North Korea: Did anyone say 'enriched uranium'? By Donald Kirk
JEJU, South Korea –Mystery hung over US envoy Christopher Hill's overnight
foray to Pyongyang, even as he let it be known that his talks with his North
Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, were "very detailed" and "substantive".
The questions as Hill discussed the meetings after getting to Seoul on Friday
were about the nature of the details - and how substantive did they get.
If Hill raised the ticklish issue of North Korea's highly enriched uranium
(HEU) program in any detail, he was not letting on. And if
he came up with a proposal for the US simply to buy up North Korea's nuclear
inventory, as widely reported in South Korea, he was not about to confirm or
deny anything to that effect.
Hill did, however, appear anxious to convey the impression of having talked
about highly enriched uranium without actually using the term. It was, after
all, the HEU issue that torpedoed the Geneva agreement of 1994 when his
predecessor, James Kelly, alleged after visiting Pyongyang nearly five years
ago that a top North Korean had indeed acknowledged the existence of a secret
HEU program.
"We did discuss the need to have a comprehensive list of all nuclear programs,"
said Hill. For good measure, he added, "And, of course, all means all."
It was North Korea's supposed acknowledgement to Kelly of the HEU program that
set off the chain reaction that resulted in North Korea expelling inspectors
from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the end of 2002.
The IAEA inspectors had been posted at the North Korean complex at Yongbyon,
under terms of the 1994 agreement, making sure the padlock was firmly fixed on
the five-megawatt nuclear reactor that North Korea had been using before 1994
to produce one or two warheads with plutonium at their core. North Korea soon
after their departure said it had resumed making plutonium while steadfastly
denying anything to do with highly enriched uranium.
In a sense, Hill's flight to Pyongyang - the first visit there by a senior US
official since Kelly's disastrous sortie in October 2002 - appeared as an
effort to make amends. If Kelly and his entourage had returned to Seoul in a
mood of impending crisis, Hill came out of Pyongyang with an air of having made
amends for the unpleasantness of the past.
It was as though he and Kim Kye-gwan were in sync on just about everything, at
least to judge from his remark that "both of us confirmed the commitment" to
the six-nation agreement of February 13 outlining a series of steps for North
Korea's complete dismantlement of its nuclear program.
They had discussed, said Hill, the "momentum and dynamism that will take us to
the end game" of the whole difficult process and the need for renewal of the
six-party talks to get things going again after what Hill said had been "a bump
in the road". Moreover, said Hill, he had paid a courtesy call on Pak Ui-chun,
North Korea's new foreign minister, on a schedule arranged solely by Kim, and
they had talked about ministerial-level talks that might involve a meeting
between Pak and Hill's boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The "bump" was the protracted refusal of North Korea to invite in IAEA
inspectors again and shut down that five-megawatt facility as agreed on
February 13. North Korea was to have done so within 60 days but balked as long
as it was unable to withdraw US$25 million from Banco Delta Asia in Macau,
blacklisted by the Treasury Department for serving as a conduit for counterfeit
$100 bills printed on a Swiss press in Pyongyang.
Having worked out the complex arrangement under which the money was finally
transferred to the Russian central bank through the Federal Reserve Bank in New
York after no other bank anywhere would touch the stuff, Hill left no doubt
that North Korea would now abide by the deal.
"The DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea ] indicated they're prepared
promptly to shut down the Yongbyon facility," he said, and they're also
"prepared to disable the Yongbyon facility", meaning the place will quite soon
be relegated into the history of crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
But when? That was a question that Hill was not going to answer as he stood
beside his host, South Korea's nuclear envoy, Chun Yung-woo. Nor did Chun have
any response - other than to say his government would provide 50,000 tonnes of
heavy fuel oil simultaneously with the shutdown of the Yongbyon facility and
950,000 tonnes whenever North Korea did away with the whole program.
Whatever else happened, said Chun, he could not envision any scenario whereby
"the agreement would fail to be implemented" because the five other parties
(South Korea, China, Russia, the US and Japan) "failed to provide assistance"
to the North, the sixth signatory.
Just when the IAEA team will go to Pyongyang, though, is still not certain
after the North Korean Embassy in Vienna said the trip had had to be postponed
while North Korea still waited to receive the $25 million. The money apparently
lingered in the Russian central bank, a glitch that South Korean officials
preferred to view as a mere technicality.
The mood in Jeju at a lavish government-sponsored "peace forum" was
irrepressibly optimistic as Hill was visiting Pyongyang. President Roh
Moo-hyun, opening the forum, said confidently the initial steps of the February
13 agreement "are now being implemented" and "six-party talks are also likely
to resume soon".
His remarks showed his anger over what had been the confrontational policy of
the US during President George W Bush's first term.
"At that time, even talk of a possible military strike by the United States
percolated," said Roh, and fears rose again last July and October when North
Korea "first test-fired missiles and then conducted as nuclear test". Now, he
said, "The North Korean nuclear issue is moving onto the path to peaceful
resolution."
Hill, however, warned that the saga was far from finished. "Denuclearization of
the Korean Peninsula will be a very difficult process," he cautioned. Yes, he
was "buoyed by the sense we are able to achieve our full objective of complete
denuclearization" but also "burdened by the sense we will have to go to a great
deal of effort".
Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, hosting a gala luncheon before flying to Seoul
to meet Hill, hinted at the difficulties. "We cannot concede or compromise over
the task of ensuring that North Korea gives up all nuclear weapons and other
programs," he said. "It is imperative that this goal must be achieved."
Like Hill, Song did not want to get into just what those weapons and programs
were - the dirty words, "highly enriched uranium", as if by common agreement,
remained unspoken.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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