Original source URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/world/asia/13korea.html February 13, 2007 In Shift, Accord on North Korea Seems to Be Set By JIM YARDLEY and DAVID E. SANGER BEIJING, Tuesday, Feb. 13 ‹ The United States and four other nations reached a tentative agreement to provide North Korea with roughly $400 million in fuel oil and aid, in return for the North¹s starting to disable its nuclear facilities and allowing nuclear inspectors back into the country, according to American officials who have reviewed the proposed text. While the accord sets a 60-day deadline for North Korea to accomplish those first steps toward disarmament, it leaves until an undefined moment in the future ‹ and to another negotiation ‹ the actual removal of North Korea¹s nuclear weapons and the fuel that it has manufactured to produce them. Bush administration officials said they believed that the other nations participating in the talks ‹ China, Japan, South Korea and Russia ‹ would consent to the tentative agreement as soon as Tuesday. The parties still await a final confirmation from the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. The tentative agreement was forwarded to the respective national capitals Tuesday morning. In essence, if the North agrees to the deal, a country that only four months ago conducted its first nuclear test will have traded away its ability to produce new nuclear fuel in return for immediate energy and other aid. It would still hold on to, for now, an arsenal that American intelligence officials believe contains more than a half-dozen nuclear weapons or the fuel that is their essential ingredient. The accord also leaves unaddressed the fate of a second and still-unacknowledged nuclear weapons program that the United States accused North Korea of buying from the Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan in the late 1990s, in what appeared to be an effort to circumvent a nuclear freeze the North negotiated in 1994 with the Clinton administration. Negotiations had appeared near collapse on Sunday over North Korea¹s demands for huge shipments of fuel oil and electricity. Under the new tentative agreement, the oil and aid for North Korea would be provided by South Korea, China and the United States ‹ meaning that President Bush would need to win Congressional approval. That proved difficult for the Clinton administration, which constantly fought hawks in Congress over providing fuel oil to the impoverished nation under the earlier accord. Japan has declined to participate in providing oil or aid until it resolves separate issues with North Korea about the abduction of some of its citizens by the North, American officials said. In Washington on Monday night, administration officials declined to call the first phase of the new agreement a ³nuclear freeze.² The term has echoes of the Clinton accord, which Mr. Bush had criticized because it failed to force the North to ship its nuclear fuel out of the country before it received significant aid. The officials insisted that the current agreement was different because the North will not receive light-water nuclear reactors, like the ones it was promised in the 1994 agreement, and because the agreement will also be signed by the North¹s immediate neighbors, including China. Beijing was the North¹s ally in the Korean War and its protector for decades, but relations have been strained and the Chinese leadership was apparently pressuring the North to accept the new agreement. ³If they renege on this,² said one senior administration official, who would not speak on the record because the deal had not been signed, ³they are sticking their fingers into the eyes of the Chinese.² Nonetheless, some administration officials acknowledged that they had concluded that a step-by-step accord was their only choice and that it would be impossible to set a schedule for the North¹s disarmament without taking initial steps to build trust. ³Everybody had to make some changes to try to narrow the differences,² the chief American negotiator, Christopher R. Hill, told reporters as he returned to his hotel at 2:41 a.m. on Tuesday. Mr. Hill was expected to meet again on Tuesday in Beijing with envoys from China, South Korea, Japan, Russia and North Korea to learn if each nation has approved the deal. He said he had been in frequent contact with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the late-night negotiations and that he believed the Bush administration would support the agreement. ³We feel it is an excellent draft,² he said. ³I don¹t think we are the problem.² If Mr. Hill is correct, it marks a major change of course for an administration that has been beset by six years of virulent internal arguments over whether to negotiate with North Korea or squeeze the government of Mr. Kim until it collapses. Hawks in the administration, including many allies of Vice President Dick Cheney, have opposed any deal that would provide aid to the North before it disgorges its arsenal. Even before the preliminary agreement was signed in Beijing, one of Mr. Cheney¹s protégés, John R. Bolton, who left his post as American ambassador to the United Nations just two months ago, denounced the accord. ³This is a very bad deal,² he said on CNN, urging President Bush to reject it. He added that ³it contradicts fundamental premises of the president¹s policy,² and he said that it made the administration ³look very weak.² Gary Samore, who was the top nonproliferation official in the Clinton White House and who negotiated with North Korea, commended the Bush administration for negotiating an accord with the North, but said: ³Unfortunately, it is three years, eight bombs and one nuclear test too late. But better late than never.² Under the details of the deal, as described by American and Asian officials, the $400 million in aid would be disbursed to the North as it meets its initial commitments, probably over the course of a year. The first of those must be completed in the next 60 days, including the ³permanent disablement² of the country¹s existing nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, its main nuclear complex north of the capital, Pyongyang. The International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors were kicked out of North Korea four years ago, also would need to be invited back in. And the North would have to prepare a ³complete declaration² of all its nuclear facilities, turning that over to all of the parties in the talks and the I.A.E.A. That would pave the way for a second phase, in which ³working groups² would negotiate the details of disarmament, including turning over weapons and fuel. Other groups would explore normalization of relations, a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War, and other economic aid in return for disarmament. But the disarmament process promises to be enormously complex, far harder than dismantling Libya¹s comparatively small nuclear complex three years ago. Libya never produced nuclear material. North Korea is believed to have made one or two weapons, or the fuel for them, nearly two decades ago, and perhaps a half-dozen or more since 2003. But American officials are uncertain exactly how many weapons the North possesses, and in the second phase of the accord, the North would have to explain what it did with the uranium-enrichment equipment that it is said to have purchased from Dr. Khan. ³We don¹t know what state that program is in,² one senior official with access to the intelligence information said Monday. ³We only know what they appear to have bought,² based in part on Pakistani interrogations of Dr. Khan. United Nations sanctions against North Korea put into place after last year¹s nuclear test are expected to remain in effect for the next year, American officials said. Some experts doubt that the North will ever agree to turn over its weapons, which it considers its main bargaining chip with the West, and Mr. Kim¹s only insurance policy against being toppled. ³This is a freeze with a promise to negotiate subsequent disarmament,² said Mr. Samore. ³And a North Korean promise to negotiate later is pretty worthless.² Mr. Hill acknowledged that he had a lot of negotiating ahead of him. ³This is only one phase of denuclearization,² he said. ³We¹re not done.² If the deal is approved, Mr. Hill added, the new working groups could be quickly established while chief negotiators would likely reconvene in Beijing as soon as next month. He said the tentative agreement would create a succession of deadlines that would need to be met as a precondition of the deal. North Korea had nearly scuttled the negotiations in recent days by insisting on a huge energy aid package. Varying reports in Asia suggested that North Korea had demanded two million tons of heavy fuel oil and two million kilowatts of electricity in exchange for its approval of any new agreement, far less than it got. Jim Yardley reported from Beijing, and David E. Sanger from Washington. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company -- -------------------------------------------------------- Escaping the Matrix website http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website http://cyberjournal.org Community Democracy Framework: http://cyberjournal.org/DemocracyFramework.html subscribe cyberjournal list mailto:•••@••.••• Posting archives http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/
