Chief United States negotiator Christopher Hill cautioned on Wednesday that difficult work remained to implement the breakthrough energy-for-arms agreement with North Korea.
The deal, hammered out at six-party talks in Beijing in the shadow of North Korea’s first nuclear test last October, requires the secretive state to shutter is Yongbyon reactor within 60 days in exchange for 50 000 tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent aid.
”I think we all need a rest in the next 24 hours, but we have so much work to do,” a tired-looking Hill told reporters on his way to the airport. ”We have to begin the process of getting this agreement implemented.”
”We have some ambitious time schedules,” he added.
The marathon talks between the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia nearly broke up with no agreement, but an all-night negotiating session finally brought a compromise that Hill said hinged on the amount of energy aid offered.
”It was the energy issue, and it was our willingness to go bigger on energy in return for them going deeper on denuclearisation,” he said.
After the 60-day period, energy-hungry North Korea will receive another 950 000 tonnes or fuel oil, or the equivalent in other aid, when it takes further steps to disable its nuclear capabilities.
Despite the long road ahead to overcome deep mistrust between the United States and North Korea and implement the deal, officials in Washington said it marked a major breakthrough.
US President George Bush, who once bracketed communist North Korea in an ”axis of evil” along with Iran and pre-war Iraq, said the agreement represented ”the best opportunity to use diplomacy to address North Korea’s nuclear programme”.
First step
White House spokesperson Tony Snow said it was an ”important first step” but warned that if North Korea — in past a fickle negotiating partner — reneged on the deal, there was ”still the possibility of sanctions through the international community”.
North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, reporting on the agreement, spoke of a ”temporary” suspension of operations at its nuclear facilities. It was not clear if this signalled backsliding in Pyongyang, but Hill dismissed the report.
Analysts said the agreement was a step forward but that there were serious challenges ahead.
”Freezing, suspending, disabling isn’t necessarily the same as abandonment,” said Zhang Lianggui, a North Korea specialist at the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Party School.
”So we still need to discount the possibility that North Korea will really abandon nuclear weapons. That’s a much more difficult and long-term issue.”
The agreement also includes provisions for the US and Japan to discuss normalising ties with North Korea, and says Washington will begin the process of removing Pyongyang from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
”We have to start a process on that,” Hill said of the terror delisting.
”Some of it is legal, some of it’s political, some of it’s diplomatic, and some of it is just related to the basic proposition that when they get out of this nuclear business, everything will be possible and if they don’t get out of the nuclear business, nothing is possible.”
Some analysts said moves toward normalisation were symbolically more important to the isolated North than aid for the impoverished country.
”Their ultimate goal is not nuclear weapons, but two things — normalising relations with the United States, especially economic and security ties, and becoming a normal state accepted in international society,” said Xu Guangyu, an analyst at the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association.
”That’s their true goal.” ‒ Reuters