North Korea appeared certain to miss a year-end deadline to finish disabling its atomic plants and declare all its nuclear programmes, a key element in a six-nation disarmament accord.
After almost two decades of confrontation over its nuclear ambitions, the communist state in 2007 took an unprecedented step by starting to make its main plutonium-producing plants unusable.
Under agreements reached in February and October, it was supposed to have completed the disablement and to have declared all its nuclear programmes by December 31.
In return it should receive one million tons of fuel oil or equivalent energy aid, and diplomatic benefits including moves towards normalised relations with the United States.
The disablement, financed and supervised by the US, has made progress but was expected to miss the deadline for technical reasons.
More problematic is the delay in securing a declaration, a key indicator of whether the North intends to go all the way under the accord and make the peninsula nuclear-free.
Some analysts predict the delay will continue for months.
”While the disablement is a technical issue, the declaration is a politically strategic one which requires lots of thought,” Kim Sung-Han, an international politics professor at Korea University, said.
”The declaration is seen as a litmus test of whether Pyongyang is really willing to be a nuclear-free state. Given the current stalemate, it must have made no strategic decision yet.”
The US State Department on Sunday expressed disappointment at the delay. It said it would continue to work with Japan, South Korea, China and Russia ”as we urge North Korea to deliver a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear-weapons programmes”.
One problem is reaching agreement on how much bomb-making plutonium was produced at Yongbyon in the past. The North used some of this to stage its atomic weapons test in October 2006, lending greater urgency to the six-party process.
According to Japanese media reports, the North has told the US it produced 30kg of plutonium — less than the 50kg estimated by Washington.
A suspected uranium-enrichment programme — the issue which in 2002 wrecked a previous disarmament deal — is another key hurdle.
The US says it has good evidence that Pyongyang imported material that could be used for such a programme, even if it is not up and running. The North has never publicly admitted any such operation.
Media reports say it has admitted buying special aluminium tubing from Russia, but for a rocket programme rather than for enriching uranium.
Daniel Pinkston, senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, said it was ambitious to expect total de-nuclearisation in the coming year.
He expects Pyongyang to wait to assess the policy of incoming South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, who has promised to take a firmer line with the North.
It could even wait until after the next US administration takes office in January 2009, to make sure that any deal with the Bush administration is not overturned, Pinkston said.
”I hope I’m wrong but that’s what I would expect,” he said.
”From a strict bargaining standpoint, if I were in their shoes I would not play my last card at this point.” — Sapa-AFP