North Korea’s submission of its nuclear declaration to China is impending. It is also expected that the latest round of Six Party Talks will be held soon. The measurement of when to remove North Korea from the list of terrorism-sponsoring nations is ongoing.
However, considering that the U.S. emphasizes complete verification through the declaration, and that the U.S. presidential election is approaching, it is predicted by some that the third phase of the denuclearization negotiations will not in fact begin this year.
On the 20th, Radio Free Asia quoted an expert on U.S. foreign affairs, in which it was said that the next week is a decisive time for ending the North Korean nuclear issue.
Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs at MOFAT Kim Sook said on the 18th that “North Korea and the United States have found common ground in settling the issue of the North’s declaration of its nuclear developments. I expect it to be submitted this month.” Additionally, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mentioned at a 16th June forum held by the Heritage Foundation that “Korea will soon give its nuclear declaration to China.”
As soon as North Korea submits the declaration to China, the U.S. seems set to rush into the procedure of removing North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. This is because Republicans are facing the presidential election, so the Bush administration wants to wrap up the 2nd phase of the denuclearization and achieve a result through the 3rd phase.
Delegates from South Korea, the U.S, and Japan held a meeting on June 19th wherein they reaffirmed the significance of North Korea submitting its nuclear declaration at the earliest opportunity, and its subsequent complete verification, so as to speed up the implementation of the 2nd phase of denuclearization.
The three countries’ delegates acknowledged that the Six Party Talks should also be resumed as soon as possible, in order to end the 2nd phase of the denuclearization process and launch the 3rd phase.
North Korea has been acting positively; submitting the 18,000 pages of nuclear documents and promising to reexamine cases of abducting Japanese citizens. It also promised to hold a “show;” exploding the cooling tower of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor.
Howsoever, Japan objects to the U.S. removing North Korea from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list without solving the abduction issue first.
Rice stated that in that case,
“President Bush would… notify Congress of our intention to remove North Korea from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list and to cease the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act. In the next 45 days after that, before those actions go into effect, we would continue to assess the level of North Korean cooperation in helping to verify the accuracy and completeness of its declaration.” Regarding this, expert analysis concludes that as the Bush administration faces the expiration of its term of office it would step in to speed up the procedure of removing North Korea from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
The chief of the Arms Control Studies Division at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses Kim Tae Woo evaluated the process of the declaration of North Korean nuclear programs as a “politics game,” saying that “The negotiations in the 2nd phase of the Six Party Talks are being wrapped up by ‘haggling’ rather than by verifying the truth of North Korean nuclear capabilities.”
Kim said that “North Korea was supposed to declare sincerely its use ranges and the total stock of plutonium and to verify comprehensively its nuclear weapon production ability. Yet, North Korea has not done so; the U.S. may nevertheless accept a lower level declaration.”
After the declaration of the nuclear programs and removing North Korea from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, the 2nd phase of denuclearization will be essentially complete. However, negotiations in the 3rd phase would likely start next year because the verification process would take a considerable amount of time.
It is hard to exclude the possibility that the nuclear declaration might be delayed. In this case, the Six Party Talks would lose momentum, so the nuclear issue would pass into next year.
Researcher Kim Tae Woo also predicted that “It will take a few years just to translate the declaration that North Korea will submit to China and verify it properly.” He added that “The negotiation of the complete nuclear disarmament of the 3rd phase would not be started within the Bush administration’s term of office, because the declaration of the nuclear program and the verification issue has already become a ‘politics game.’”
