Korea Times
Park Song-wu
2/9/2007
A draft accord, circulated by China after resuming the six-party talks on Thursday, reportedly contains the key phrase: North Korea will shut down its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon within 60 days in return for energy alternatives.
Declining to confirm the report, however, a senior South Korean official indicated on Friday that there might be another key subject the North wants to include in the draft.
“I think it is inappropriate to characterize the draft simply as a nuclear freeze with energy aid,” he said, referring to initial steps to implement a 2005 deal under which the North pledged to dismantle its nuclear programs in return for economic and diplomatic benefits.
As envoys were keeping quiet, the question of what else the North wants to put into the draft needs to be identified from what Kim Gye-gwan, Pyongyang’s top envoy to the denuclearization talks, told reporters upon arriving at Beijing on Thursday.
“We are ready to discuss the initial steps, but whether the United States will give up its hostile policy against us and come out for mutual, peaceful co-existence will be the basis for our judgment,” he said.
Even though it looks like just another cliche, what he apparently made clear was that Washington’s “carrots,” such as energy, food and the lifting of sanctions, could not satisfy Pyongyang.
Two U.S. scholars recently said in a co-authored article for the Nautilus Institute that Pyongyang’s fundamental goal is to improve its relations with Washington by using the six-party framework.
“Above all, it wants, and has pursued steadily since 1991, a long-term, strategic relationship with the United States,” said John Lewis, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, and Robert Carlin, a former U.S. State Department analyst who participated in most of the U.S.-North Korea negotiations between 1993 and 2000.
A pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan also said on Friday that North Korea wants the United States to make an “irreversible” decision to drop its hostile policy toward the Stalinist state.
“The North holds the position that it can take corresponding steps only after it confirms the United States takes the first irreversible steps toward dropping the hostile policy,” the Chosun Sinbo reported.
Technically, it is possible to dismantle the North’s reactors irreversibly.
But political decisions can always be reversed. That is why Pyongyang may want Washington to make a big political concession during the initial stage of denuclearization so that it can gain trust in the United States.
The concession could include replacing the 1953 armistice with a peace treaty, as U.S. President George W. Bush indicated during his summit with President Roh Moo-hyun in Vietnam late last year. Pyongyang may also want Washington to erase its name from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
But a lingering question is whether the North will really decide to give up its nuclear programs that have served as a lifeline for the country.
