Translated material
Nuclear Persuasion
US seeks North Korea's agreement to inspections
Today, in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two Korean states, for the first time since the election of Lee Myung-bak, not very beloved by the northerners, as president of South Korea at the beginning of this year, negotiations on military issues will be held between representatives of Seoul and Pyongyang. The warming of inter-Korean relations creates a favorable background for the emergency mission of US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who arrived yesterday through the DMZ in Pyongyang to meet with his traditional interlocutor, Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan. The American's goal is to dissuade Pyongyang from resuming its nuclear program by maintaining in force the agreement on the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear facilities in exchange for international assistance.“We are in a critical phase of negotiations,” Hill stressed before leaving Seoul. In mid-August, North Korea announced it had stopped dismantling its nuclear facilities and promised to consider restoring the main reactor at Yongbyon. Pyongyang announced its readiness to “stop nuclear disarmament” in response to the Americans’ failure to fulfill their obligations. The United States has not removed North Korea from the list of countries sponsoring international terrorism, although it promised to do so 45 days after the North Koreans handed over to their negotiating partners on June 26 a list of information about their nuclear programs.
Pyongyang handed over the report, but in response, the United States demanded that they be allowed to conduct unannounced inspections in the DPRK at any sites of interest to the Americans and be given the opportunity to interrogate North Korean nuclear scientists without witnesses. For Pyongyang, these demands are unacceptable; the answer to them was a statement about the resumption of the nuclear program. Sources in the US State Department voice different versions of Hill's mission - he is allegedly bringing a “new package of economic incentives” to North Korea in exchange for accelerated disarmament or a proposal to temporarily lift American sanctions related to the DPRK’s status as a “sponsor of terrorism.” But demands for inspections and interviews remain in place, leaving little hope for the negotiations to succeed.
Just before Hill’s arrival, South Korean intelligence recorded “suspicious activity” in the area of the Panji test site, where the DPRK conducted its first nuclear test on October 9, 2006. And yesterday in the United States an interview appeared with the former head of the CIA's East Asia department, Arthur Brown, who said that Pyongyang could resume the operation of a plant for the production of weapons-grade plutonium in Yongbyon in just one or two weeks. According to Brown, “North Korea has no intention of giving up nuclear weapons,” and therefore negotiations with it are “an illusion,” although “the United States also has no military choice.” However, yesterday the American nuclear aircraft carrier George Washington set sail for joint exercises with the South Korean Navy in Busan, South Korea.
“We must separate the position of the pragmatist Hill from the position of his superiors, who at a certain stage - especially when the Pentagon was headed by Donald Rumsfeld - very much tied his hands,” Konstantin Asmolov, a leading researcher at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Vremya Novostey. “Hill is interested in negotiations for the sake of disarmament of the DPRK, and not as a pretext for regime change in this country. He can achieve important results. The question is to what extent Washington will take advantage of them and how much the North Koreans will trust it, knowing that the United States will not fulfill its part of its obligations,” the expert said.