Peace in exchange for fuel oil

North Korea is ready to shut down its main nuclear reactor

Pyongyang agreed to suspend its nuclear program in exchange for foreign assistance - this is the result of the six-party talks on the DPRK nuclear issue that ended yesterday in Beijing. The appearance of a document on Pyongyang's nuclear disarmament agreed upon by all parties - the two Koreas, China, the United States, Russia and Japan - was welcome news. Negotiations that have lasted since 2003 have yielded vague statements at best, after which the Korean nuclear crisis only deepened. In October 2006, North Korea announced that it had carried out an underground nuclear explosion , after which the UN Security Council imposed sanctions against Pyongyang. Less than six months later, North Korea expressed a desire to take the path of correction.

The next stage of negotiations started on February 8, and on Monday the intensity of the discussion reached its climax. And yesterday morning, after 17 hours of continuous brainstorming, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, who chaired the meeting, announced an “important unanimous agreement.” It consists in the fact that within 60 days the DPRK will shut down and seal its main nuclear facility for the production of weapons-grade plutonium - the reactor in Yongbyon - with the aim of its subsequent complete closure. This happens under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Its inspectors will carry out “the necessary monitoring and inspections as agreed between the DPRK and the IAEA.” As compensation, North Korea will receive 50 thousand tons of fuel oil.

If the IAEA is convinced that this condition is met, and the DPRK transfers to its negotiating partners a complete list of its nuclear facilities and programs, demonstrating its readiness to curtail them, then it will receive another 950 thousand tons of fuel oil. Previously, the DPRK requested 2 million tons of fuel, but even half of this volume will not be superfluous for its economy.

China, South Korea, Russia and the United States have agreed to help North Korea in equal shares. The head of the Russian delegation at the negotiations, Alexander Losyukov, said that the decision on how Russia will provide economic assistance to the DPRK will be made by the government. Perhaps Russia will assist the DPRK “in the form of fuel supplies.” According to the diplomat, the topic of Moscow’s possible write-off of debts to Pyongyang “has no direct relation to its energy problem.” The total debt is about $8 billion.

The next, sixth round of negotiations will begin in Beijing on March 19. Economic and energy assistance to the DPRK will be dealt with by one of five working groups, which should begin work within the next 30 days. The remaining groups will focus on the “denuclearization of the peninsula,” creating a mechanism for ensuring security in the region, and normalizing relations between the DPRK and Japan and the United States. Russia, Mr. Losyukov said, will chair the multilateral working group on stability and security in Northeast Asia.

Senior researcher at the Center for Korean Studies at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Konstantin Asmolov, told Vremya Novostei that the problem of mutual trust remains unresolved. The document adopted yesterday in Beijing is a “gentleman’s agreement” as regards the order of mutual concessions. “The United States continues to believe that the DPRK must first dismantle the reactor, and only then will the US and UN Security Council sanctions be lifted and the accounts unfrozen.” There is also ambiguity in the issue of equity financing, the expert believes. “The Americans initiated the problem, but they themselves will pay significantly less than they should have. The Japanese don’t intend to give any money at all.” As a result, “a very unpleasant situation could arise when Russia and China are forced to pay other people’s debts.”

Yesterday's agreement paved the way for the start of direct negotiations between the DPRK and the United States. Pyongyang is seeking diplomatic recognition from Washington, seeing this as an important guarantee of the existence of the North Korean regime.

The Americans have already committed to begin the process of removing North Korea from the list of states sponsoring international terrorism, which involves lifting restrictions imposed by the United States on trade with North Korea. The completion date for this process is not yet known, but financial sanctions could be lifted within a month. The seizure of North Korean accounts worth $24 million in a Macau bank, carried out in the fall of 2005 at the request of the United States, provoked a sharp counter-reaction from Pyongyang, which interrupted participation in the six-party talks for 13 months.

Another problem is how to establish dialogue between North Korea and Japan . Tokyo insists that Pyongyang remove “concerns” about the fate of Japanese citizens allegedly abducted by North Korean intelligence services in the 1970s and 1980s, and until then it is not going to participate in the DPRK energy assistance program. As Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said yesterday, there has not been much progress in bilateral negotiations on the issue of abducted Japanese.

The emerging movement to overcome the Korean nuclear crisis may fall victim to intransigence on both sides. Director of the Center for International Studies at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Anatoly Utkin, told Vremya Novostei: “Pyongyang has not yet received firm guarantees that it will not become the target of an attack from the United States, like Iraq. 37 thousand American soldiers will remain in South Korea. American bases will remain in Okinawa. I think that even in Seoul, Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons are perceived as a guarantee of Japan’s non-aggression on the Korean Peninsula. If Pyongyang now receives neither fuel oil nor guarantees of non-aggression from the United States or Japan, then it may well remove the seals from its nuclear reactors.”

The expert recalled that Pyongyang had already been deceived - the energy deal concluded in 1994 under American President Bill Clinton ended in nothing. The Korea Energy Development Organization (KEDO) began building two militarily safe light water nuclear reactors in the DPRK in exchange for Pyongyang's abandonment of its own nuclear program, but in the end, all that was left of this project was the abandoned foundation of a nuclear power plant. “I don’t think that this time Washington will abandon its obligations. The George W. Bush administration needs foreign policy success amid failures in Iraq. In addition, Russia and China act as guarantors of the implementation of the Six agreements,” Mr. Utkin noted.

Senior expert at the Institute of National Security and Strategic Studies Sergei Kazennov, in a conversation with Vremya Novostey, expressed the opinion that the agreements reached so far “do not guarantee anything”; this is a “virtual agreement” in which the White House is primarily interested. In fact, we can only talk about a return to an agreement very similar to the KEDO project. According to Mr. Cazennov, the possession of nuclear weapons will remain among Pyongyang’s trump cards in the negotiations: “For now, the North Korean reactor is not dismantled, as the Americans demanded, but is simply sealed. In addition, the “nuclear demon” of the DPRK is needed by the United States to mobilize allies in the Far East and justify building up its own military power, including the creation of a missile defense system.”

Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN, Victor VOLODIN