North Korea says it will halt nuclear activities

FOSTER KLUG, MATTHEW PENNINGTON

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — North Korea raised hopes Wednes­day for a major eas­ing in nuclear ten­sions under its youth­ful new leader, agree­ing to sus­pend ura­nium enrich­ment at a major facil­ity and refrain from mis­sile and nuclear tests in exchange for a moun­tain of crit­i­cally needed U.S. food aid.

It was only a pre­lim­i­nary step but a nec­es­sary one to restart broader six-nation nego­ti­a­tions that would lay down terms for what the North could get in return for aban­don­ing its nuclear weapons pro­gram. Pyongyang pulled out of those talks in 2009 and seem­ingly has viewed the nuclear pro­gram as key to the sur­vival of its dynas­tic, com­mu­nist regime, now enter­ing its third generation.

But the announce­ment, just over two months after the death of long­time ruler Kim Jong Il, also opened a door for the secre­tive gov­ern­ment under his untested youngest son, Kim Jong Un, to improve ties with the United States and win crit­i­cally needed aid and inter­na­tional acceptance.

It also opened the way for inter­na­tional nuclear inspec­tions after years when the North’s pro­gram went unmonitored.

Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton said the agree­ment, announced at sep­a­rate but simul­ta­ne­ous state­ments by the long­time adver­saries, was a mod­est step but also “a reminder that the world is trans­form­ing around us.”

“We, of course, will be watch­ing closely and judg­ing North Korea’s new lead­ers by their actions,” Clin­ton told a con­gres­sional hearing.

Indeed, North Korea has reneged on nuclear com­mit­ments in the past. An accord under the six-party talks col­lapsed in 2008 when Pyongyang refused to abide by ver­i­fi­ca­tion that U.S. diplo­mats claimed had been agreed upon.

The North Korean For­eign Ministry’s state­ment, issued by the state-run news agency, said the North had agreed to the nuclear mora­to­ri­ums and U.N. inspec­tors “with a view to main­tain­ing pos­i­tive atmos­phere” for the U.S.-North Korea talks.

North Korea faces tough U.N. sanc­tions that were tight­ened in 2009 when it con­ducted its sec­ond nuclear test and fired a long-range rocket. In late 2010, it unveiled a ura­nium enrich­ment facil­ity that could give North Korea a sec­ond route to man­u­fac­ture nuclear weapons in addi­tion to its exist­ing plutonium-based program.

In the mean­time, its peo­ple have con­tin­ued to go hun­gry. The North suf­fered famine in the 1990s and appealed for the aid a year ago to alle­vi­ate its chronic food short­ages. U.S. char­i­ties reported after a trip to North Korea late last year that chil­dren were suf­fer­ing “slow starvation.”

Clin­ton said the United States will meet with North Korea to final­ize details for a pro­posed pack­age of 240,000 met­ric tons of food aid. She said inten­sive mon­i­tor­ing of the aid would be required, a reflec­tion of U.S. con­cerns that food could be diverted to the North’s pow­er­ful military.

A senior Obama admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial said it was only in talks last week in Bei­jing that pre­saged Wednesday’s announce­ment that the North had dropped its demand for rice and grains — viewed as eas­ier to divert — and agreed to accept the U.S. “nutri­tional assis­tance” such as corn soy blend and other food tar­geted to young chil­dren and preg­nant women.

The offi­cial spoke to reporters on con­di­tion of anonymity because of diplo­matic sensitivity.

North Korea’s chief rival, South Korea, a staunch U.S. ally sup­ported by 28,000 Amer­i­can troops, wel­comed the agree­ment, although it has yet to receive the apol­ogy it wants from the North for two mil­i­tary attacks that killed 50 South Kore­ans in 2010.

Those hos­til­i­ties nearly pitched the divided Penin­sula into war, and the elder Kim’s Dec. 17 death had fueled con­cern that the North could attack again and con­duct another nuclear test.

Wednesday’s announce­ment should ease those con­cerns, and was a wel­come devel­op­ment for Pres­i­dent Barack Obama in an elec­tion year when he will be look­ing to avoid another secu­rity cri­sis to add to the press­ing list of urgent U.S. for­eign pol­icy con­cerns. Those include Iran’s nuclear pro­gram, the blood­shed in Syria and a deeply unsta­ble Afghanistan.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he hoped North Korea would move toward “a ver­i­fi­able denu­cleariza­tion of the Korean penin­sula.” Britain’s For­eign Sec­re­tary William Hague said it was pos­i­tive news, and the change in North Korean lead­er­ship offered a chance for “renewed engage­ment with the inter­na­tional community.”

Out­siders have been closely watch­ing how the younger Kim, believed to be in his late 20s, han­dles nuclear diplo­macy with the United States and del­i­cate rela­tions with South Korea. His con­sol­i­da­tion of power, with the help of senior advis­ers who worked with his father and grand­fa­ther, appears to be going smoothly, although deter­min­ing the inten­tions and inter­nal dynam­ics in Pyongyang is noto­ri­ously difficult.

Since Kim Jong Il’s death, North Korea has vowed to main­tain the late leader’s poli­cies and has linked its nuclear pro­gram to Kim’s legacy. Many observers are skep­ti­cal whether North Korea will ever give up its nuclear program.

“North Korea uses (the nuclear pro­gram) as lever­age to win con­ces­sions in return for dis­ar­ma­ment mea­sures. Since Kim Jong Il’s death, it has called (the pro­gram) the country’s most impor­tant achieve­ment,” Baek Seung-joo, an ana­lyst at the state-run Korea Insti­tute for Defense Analy­ses in South Korea, said. “There is still a long way to go.”

While Demo­c­ra­tic law­mak­ers in the U.S. wel­comed the agree­ment, some Repub­li­cans reacted with skep­ti­cism, warn­ing that Wash­ing­ton was head­ing down a path it has trod before, offer­ing aid in return for nuclear com­mit­ments, only to see North Korea renege.

“Pyongyang will likely con­tinue its clan­des­tine nuclear weapons pro­gram right under our noses. We have bought this bridge sev­eral times before,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair­woman of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives For­eign Affairs Committee.

The admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial echoed some of that cau­tion. But he also said the U.S. took it as a pos­i­tive sign that the new North Korean lead­er­ship had car­ried on with a pol­icy set in train before Kim Jong Il’s death, and had shown some swift­ness in reach­ing the accord before the offi­cial 100-day mourn­ing period was over.

While North Korea’s com­mit­ments meet the pre-steps set by the U.S. for the resump­tion of six-party disarmament-for-aid talks, the offi­cial said the U.S. had made no promise to restart them. He said North Korea would first have to make good on its lat­est com­mit­ments. The U.S. would also have to map out a strat­egy with the other par­ties in the talks — China, Japan, Rus­sia and South Korea — on what they could offer the North in return for the irre­versible dis­man­tling of its nuclear weapons program.

The U.S. and North Korean state­ments on the agree­ment dif­fered on some details, includ­ing whether inspec­tors from U.N.’s Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency would be allowed into both the ura­nium enrich­ment and plutonium-based pro­grams. The North Korean state­ment referred only to ura­nium enrichment.

A senior Obama admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial acknowl­edged that omis­sion but said the U.S. was in no doubt that the North had agreed to let IAEA inspec­tors in to con­firm the dis­abling of plutonium-producing reac­tor at its main nuclear com­plex in Yongbyon.

Posted by AP News on Feb 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.