Upon concluding the North Korea Six-Party Talks U.S.-DPRK Working Group Meetings held in Geneva, Switzerland on September 2nd, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill announced that North Korea has agreed to disable all nuclear facilities and declare a complete list of its nuclear programs by the end of this year. In light of this announcement, expectations have risen in hope of resolving the North Korean nuclear issue.
Denuclearization by the end of this year
With the initial phase of the February 13th Agreement nearing completion and as the next phrase of denuclearization approaches, North Korea has obliged to meet the deadline suggested by the U.S. and has agreed to a detailed schedule. Judging by these developments, it appears the roadmap toward North Korean denuclearization is well underway.
“We will have a declaration in time to disable what needs to be disabled,” declared Hill. “For example, the Yongbyon reactor would have to be included” (New York Times, September 3, 2007).
The second of the two phases of the denuclearization roadmap is “Incapacitation” which mandates the complete irreversible dismantlement of all nuclear facilities within North Korea. Last month at the Six Party Talks Working Group for Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula held in Shenyang, China, it was proposed to eliminate control rod drivers, a core component, as one method of disabling North Korea’s nuclear reactors.
The US and North Korea have agreed to accomplish “denuclearization by the end of the year.” However, there are still factors remaining. In particular, North Korea has insisted that in order to commence with the dismantlement of their nuclear facilities, progress must be made regarding talks on the construction and provision of light water reactors. It is yet to be seen how this issue will interact with the process of carrying out the agreement; however, the possibility exists that the mid-September Six Party Talks could encounter obstacles should North Korea continue to interject with its demands for light-water reactors.
All nuclear weapons to be declared
Alongside the matter of North Korean nuclear facility dismantlement lies another pivotal issue, whether North Korea possesses a uranium enrichment program and whether existing nuclear weapons will be included on the declaration list.
At the U.S.-North Korean conference, the two sides seem to have come to an agreement regarding the UEP issue. North Korea stated that they will explicate the declaration process without additional conditions attached to the dialogue set at the Six Party Talks Working Group for Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula held in Shenyang, China. On this point, Hill asserted that “the two sides had very good and substantive talks, which he hopes will continue in the future.”
Even so, despite Hill’s continued insistence that all nuclear programs must be declared, the question as to whether North Korea will comply by including existing nuclear weapons and extracted plutonium on the list has yet to be answered.
The general consensus among experts is that, judging by past behavior, North Korea most likely will not complete the list in compliance with U.S. demands. While North Korea may concede to disable its nuclear facilities in order to obtain political and economic consideration, revealing the existence of powerful nuclear weapons which have proven so useful in maintaining the current regime will not be easily done.
Elimination from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and terminated application of Trading with the Enemy Act
It has been analyzed that the North Korean government has readily agreed to dismantle its nuclear facilities and declare a complete list of all nuclear programs because of the possibility that the U.S. would then make a concrete pledge to comply with North Korea’s persistent demands for its removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and for terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act.
In response to this analysis, Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, said, “The question is whether the U.S. will make such a concrete commitment. As political compensation, the U.S. would have to change hostile policies toward North Korea and shift toward systematic, legal mechanisms for pursuing peaceful coexistence. Analyze that.”
President Bush, in an August 31st interview with Asian and Pacific reporters, stated that he has already made his decision, suggesting a change in U.S. hostile policies toward North Korea. In the interview, he encouraged the North Korean leadership’s resolution to proceed with the dismantlement process. The agreement is seen as North Korea’s concord with ‘Bush’s Message.’
As an additional area of concern, the U.S. has linked the list of state sponsors of terrorism with the Japanese Abductees issue. The much anticipated Japan-North Korea Working Group meeting, which is to be held on the 5th-6th of this month, may mark the turning point in the policy.
On one hand, while it is true that the U.S.-North Korean Normalization talks were more positive than expected and have heightened hopes of resolving the North Korean nuclear issue, there is no guarantee that North Korea will not once again return to its original agenda.
Experts predict that it is still difficult to say for certain whether the dismantlement process will be accomplished by the end-of-the-year deadline, given there are only four months left. However, even if North Korea is successful in meeting the deadline, experts say the real progress will be made when and if North Korea’s existing nuclear weapons are abandoned within the first half of next year. From that time, there will be a greater possibility for rapid change in the relationship between the two countries.
