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China on Thursday circulated a draft agreement at reopened six-party nuclear talks after compiling opinions from the six chief delegates for initial steps to end North Korea¡¯s nuclear program. Participants will negotiate the draft at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on Friday, with a chance that they could reach agreement this week. The talks also include South Korea, the U.S., Japan and Russia.
In a briefing after a plenary session on the first day, the chief South Korean delegate Chun Yung-woo said there had been ¡°some consensus among the participants, so the drafting of an agreement began earlier than usual." The draft is reportedly based on the principle of simultaneous implementation: in two months, North Korea would completely halt the operation of five nuclear facilities, including a 5-megawatt reactor in Yongbyon and a reprocessing facility, and admit inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), while the other five nations provide it with energy, chiefly heavy oil. The draft also envisages working-level talks to discuss normalization of U.S. and Japanese diplomatic relations with North Korea and the establishment of a peace treaty, both specified in a statement of principles from the six-party talks in September 2005.
Chun said North Korea did not mention U.S. financial sanctions including the freezing of the North¡¯s accounts with Banco Delta Asia in Macau. ¡°We didn't discuss it,¡± he said. ¡°In key-note speeches, participants agreed that they should reach consensus on an early implementation¡± of the 2005 statement of principles. A South Korean government official said the participants have ¡°almost¡± reached a consensus on the general outline. ¡°But when it comes to details, they still have a long way to go, so it remains to be seen how they will fare."
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U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and chief negotiator to the six-party talks Christopher Hill speaks to journalists at the St. Regis Hotel in Beijing on Thursday. /Yonahp
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U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill stressed that his government aims to shut down nuclear facilities and seal spent fuel rod in North Korea, instead of just freezing them. ¡°I really do not like to hear this word 'freeze.' We are not interested in freezing something,¡± Hill told reporters after the talks. ¡°We are interested in addressing problems created by plutonium production in North Korea" and taking steps toward the abandonment of these nuclear programs.
The U.S. feels the first step must be for the North to shut down its main nuclear reactor. Technically speaking, the power switch will be turned off and the fuel rods cooled in the grid. In the Geneva Accords in 1994, the U.S. used the term "freeze", but now it is apparently avoiding the term for the same technical process. The Bush administration has consistently derided the Geneva Accords as a failure because the parties agreed to ¡°freeze¡± nuclear activities so they could resume any time. Now it is insisting on the term "shut down" instead.
A South Korean government official said this seems to be designed to prevent North Korean officials from going into the nuclear facilities. After the nuclear facilities were frozen under the Geneva Accords, North Korean engineers broke the seals and inspected them with the permission of the IAEA monitoring team. Because of this, North Korea had no difficulty restarting the reactor in 2003. Will North Korea agree to ¡°shut down¡± the facilities? And even if it accepts the term, will it interpret it the same way as the U.S.? Many are skeptical. This issue will likely be carried over into bilateral negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea that will continue on Friday.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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