Nuke Disclosure Still Incomplete

Daily News Article   —   Posted on December 6, 2007

(by Nicholas Kralev, Dec. 6, 2007, WashingtonTimes.com) – North Korea is still balking at disclosing all of its nuclear materials and capabilities in a declaration expected by year’s end, the chief U.S. negotiator with the reclusive state said yesterday.

The envoy, Christopher Hill, said after completing a three-day visit that the North Koreans were “pretty close to providing a declaration,” and “we have had a very useful exchange on the subject.”

But problems remain even after Mr. Hill discussed the list of nuclear activities in a rare meeting with Foreign Minister Pak Ui-chun on Tuesday.

“There are definitely some differences,” Mr. Hill told reporters after his return to Beijing. “As we discussed the declaration, as we discussed materials, installations and programs, we found that items in each of these three lists were not there that, in our view, should be there.”

The Washington Times reported last week that the North Koreans were refusing to account for centrifuges the United States says they purchased from Pakistan in the 1990s, presumably for use in a uranium-enrichment program.

U.S. officials are concerned that the centrifuges may have ended up in a third country, possibly Syria, where Israel bombed what it described as a nuclear-related facility in September.

Mr. Hill said last week that, even if the North does not have the centrifuges any longer, it must explain what happened to them.

“Our concern is, we don’t want a declaration that arrives and that immediately people see what is missing,” he said yesterday, according to a transcript released by the State Department.

“What we want to do is make sure that the draft we get is as complete and correct as possible, because we know there are a lot of people – cheering on from the sidelines or not cheering on from the sidelines – who would perhaps leap at the opportunity to look at a draft that is not complete and not correct,” he said.

Some in the Bush administration’s conservative base, including former national security officials, have criticized the current policy on North Korea championed by Mr. Hill and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, warning that the North cannot be trusted.

Mr. Hill is working hard to avoid hearing “I told you so,” which is why the declaration is so important to him, U.S. officials said.

Asked whether the differences he described had been narrowed during his visit to Pyongyang, Mr. Hill deflected the question but said, “I don’t want to suggest that we are at some impasse.”

The declaration is required under an Oct. 3 agreement among the six countries negotiating the end of the North’s nuclear program – the United States, China, Japan, Russia, and South and North Korea.

The North also has to disable its main reactor at Yongbyon by Dec. 31 in order to start getting energy and other economic assistance, as well as to begin normalizing relations with the United States and Japan.

“The disabling has gone very well,” Mr. Hill said, having witnessed the work of North Korean and U.S. experts at Yongbyon during his visit.

He said that, even if the process is not completed by midnight on Dec. 31, it will be finished soon after that. A small delay could occur because the Americans “instigated” a slowdown of the fuel discharge for safety reasons.

“We are not looking for some sort of cliffhanger – five minutes of 12. What we want to see is that this is going on as quickly as possible and as safely as possible, and we are very much convinced that that is the case,” he said.

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