[imText1]With 13 days remaining, North Korea has to disable its Yongbyon nuclear facility and declare nuclear programs by December 31st.

The project to move Yongbyon nuclear reactor’s fuel rods to the nearby a cistern for disablement was introduced in the latter half of last week and it will take approximately 100 days for the project to be completed, reported Kyodo New Service.

Nuclear fuel rods amounting to around 8,000 weigh 50 tons total, so it will be difficult to finish the project before March. However, once the project is completed, recharging the reactor will be technologically difficult. Therefore, this can be evaluated as an epochal stage in the disablement process.

The forecast for the delay in the completion of disablement was reiterated by China’s top representative Wu Dawei, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, at the Six-Party talks on the 6th of this month, “Due to technical issues, it will be difficult for North Korea’s nuclear disablement to be completed by the end of the year.”

Further, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has said that the U.S. is not concerned about whether or not disablement will be completed by December 31st. Due to essential technical issues, the U.S. cannot rush the process.

Thus, the U.S. has already widened the breadth of understanding regarding the possibility of the postponement in deadline regarding one or two projects as long as disablement has begun.

President Bush already sent an autographed letter, the first letter he has sent to Kim Jong Il, requesting the North’s reporting of good faith within the end of the year.

That is, if North Korea accurately declares the amount of abstracted plutonium and suspicions about the Uranium Enrichment Program (UEP), which turned into a second-round nuclear threat in 2002, as well as the presumed nuclear connection with Syria, the removal of North Korea from the list of terrorism-sponsoring nations, the termination of the application of Trading with the Enemy Act, regime safety, and economic support can be ensured.

North Korea has adhered to the position of “groundless rumors” regarding suspicions of its nuclear expansion and the UEP issue, which were previously introduced.

However, it was expressed that North Korea imported high-level aluminum pipes reaching about 150 tons through a former Russian businessman and Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf also revealed in last year’s autobiography that he handed over “20 centrifuges” to the North.

In actuality, North Korea is known to have said in passing at an informal meeting regarding the importing of aluminum pipes, which is the crux of the UEP issue, “We used them in missile parts or in airplane manufacturing.”

However, experts have evaluated that these aluminum pipes cannot be used as parts of missiles or airplanes. It will be difficult to jump to the “2nd-phase of denuclearization” without a complete declaration of this issue.

In the midst of this, Tom Casey, Assistant Spokesperson for the State Department, said on the 17th (local time), “I know the Chinese are still working on timing for another envoys level meeting but I don’t have any dates to share with you at this point.”

The direction of the Six-Party Talks, which has been steadily continuing after the resolution the BDA issue, depends on completion of the “nuclear program declaration” by the end of the year.

Simultaneously, Vice-Minister Wu Dawei embarked on the path to visiting the North on the 17th. It has not been confirmed whether or not the Vice-Minister visited the North as a special envoy, but through this opportunity, the interest in breakthroughs related to the difficult nuclear declaration issue has been increasing.

In the present, China does not have the leverage to persuade the North, but according to the level of North Korea’s declaration of the nuclear programs, this is a critical period on which hangs whether or not the positive momentum of the Six-Party Talks’ can be sustained.

Satisfaction regarding the declaration of the nuclear programs depends wholly on the U.S. Vice-Minister Wu is expected to play a certain kind of a role to find out common grounds between the two sides.

The issue is whether all nuclear programs in the declaration will become objects of abandonment. Can Kim Jong Il implement a decision regarding denuclearization and abandon its nuclear weapons? This will only be possible when Kim Jong Il has the confidence of sustaining its regime by abandoning its weapons.