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Six-party talks on ending North Korea¡¯s nuclear weapons program began in Beijing on Thursday. Ahead of the official meetings, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill met with Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea's vice foreign minister, and said after the meeting, ¡°We would like to do more, (North Korea) would like to do less. (But) we will figure out a way through that, this is not a big gap.¡± Early this month, the U.S. and North Korea agreed in Geneva to dismantle the communist country¡¯s nuclear facilities by the end of this year. It would be a significant step toward scrapping North Korea¡¯s nuclear program if the specific steps for disablement the two sides are set to agree on this time do not veer too far away from the original aim of the Geneva agreement.
Now is the time when North Korea¡¯s true intentions will come to light. According to the Sept. 19, 2005 statement of principles, it is during the disablement stage that North Korea must report all of its nuclear weapons plans, including plutonium inventories. And that means reporting both the amount of weapons-grade plutonium and where it is. If North Korea comes clean, it will be viewed as having made a strategic decision to give up its nuclear ambitions. This is why South Korean government officials are saying proper reporting is more important than disablement, and why Chun Yung-woo, South Korea's top negotiator for the six-party talks, has stressed the importance of truthfulness in the reporting process.
North Korea is believed to have between 50 to 60 kg of plutonium, which is enough to produce five to 12 atomic bombs. North Korea must clarify how many atomic bombs it has produced and how much plutonium it has left. If it tries again to deceive the international community, as it did after the Geneva Accords by secretly enriching uranium after promising to freeze its nuclear program, then all of the efforts made so far will go to waste.
The prospects at this point are not dim. North Korea admitted to U.S. officials early this month that it had imported from Russia around 2,600 aluminum tubes used to make uranium-enrichment centrifuges. It only takes 1,200 aluminum tubes to enrich enough uranium to build a nuclear bomb. North Korea must maintain this stance as it reports its inventory of nuclear weapons and plutonium. Its truthfulness will be revealed layer by layer depending on the contents and breadth of the items it agrees to report during the six-party talks.
The sole and ultimate goal of all of these efforts is to find and destroy all of the nuclear weapons and materials North Korea has hidden in some dark cave. The rest are just stops on the way to this final destination.
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