Announcement eases crisis over nuclear test
Under pressure from China, North Korea agreed to return to disarmament negotiations over its nuclear program. The announcement Tuesday eased tensions that had escalated after the North’s first nuclearweapons test three weeks ago.
“I am pleased and I want to thank the Chinese,” President Bush said. Bush acknowledged that new talks don’t guarantee success.
Economic pressure may have motivated North Korea to return to negotiations. China, which provides most of its neighbor’s fuel, sharply cut its exports of diesel and heating oil to North Korea in September, China’s customs administration said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao would not comment on the shipments.
The announcement follows an Oct. 14 U.N. Security Council resolution that bars trade and financial transactions that could aid North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
North Korea agreed to new talks following a meeting among top U.S., North Korean and Chinese negotiators in Beijing that included a private U.S.-North Korean session. The North Koreans had refused to return to negotiations without direct contact with U.S. officials.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., hailed the agreement as a victory for the administration’s strategy of talking to North Korea in a group, not one-onone. However, Shen Dingli, a Korea expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, said “negotiationswill bemore difficult” because North Korea will enter them as a “de facto nuclear state.”
The U.S. negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, said the six-nation negotiations could resume as early as November or December.
Hill cautioned that much work needed to be done to prepare for the resumption of talks. “We’re a longway from our goals here,” he said. “I have not broken out the champagne and cigars yet.”
North Korea may have enough radioactive material for a dozen bombs, according to the Institute for Science and International Security, a think tank.
The so-called six-party talks began in 2003. In September 2005, North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear programin return for energy aid and U.S. pledges not to attack the country. The six-party talks stalled, however, after North Korea rejected U.S. demands that it eliminate its nuclear program before receiving civilian nuclear reactors.
North Korea was also angered because the U.S. government persuaded a Macau bank a year ago to freeze $24 million in North Korean funds.
Zhang Liangui, a Korea expert for China’s Communist Central Party School, doubted new six-party negotiations would succeed. “North Korea will discuss the issue of reduction of nuclear weapons but won’t agree to complete denuclearization,” he said.
Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador and CIA station chief in South Korea, put more faith in the next U.N. secretary-general to solve the crisis. Ban Ki Moon is currently South Korea’s foreign minister.