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Talks on Korean nuke issue open amidst mixed hopes
Six-nation talks on resolving the North Korea nuclear crisis have begun in Beijing after a flurry of last minute meetings offered some hope on Pyongyang's willingness to scrap its weapons programs.
But sharp divisions between North Korea and the United States are likely stand in the way of a breakthrough and expectations of a resolution to the 16-month crisis remain dim.
"The recent flurry of diplomacy is good preparation for these talks and helps in understanding," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi said as he opened the meeting.
The talks -- between North and South Korea, Russia, Japan, China and the United States -- took six months of diplomatic shuffling after a first round last August failed to make any progress other than a loose commitment to meet again.
Unlike the August meeting, this round of discussions, which began Wednesday, has no time limit or deadline.
At loggerheads are Pyongyang and the United States. Both have refused to back down on their stance since the standoff flared in October 2002 when U.S. officials said Pyongyang admitted to secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
North Korea, labeled a rogue state and part of an axis of evil with Iran and Iraq by U.S. President George W. Bush in 2002, wants a security guarantee from Washington that the U.S. will not attack before it will freeze its nuclear programs.
It also wants fuel and economic aid as well as other concessions.
But the U.S. has demanded North Korea must first dismantle all its nuclear weapons programs and Washington will not be blackmailed into any concessions.
"The dismantlement of their nuclear weapons program is critical to any further movement in the talks," said John Bolton, undersecretary of state.
However, prior to Wednesday's talks parties hinted they might be willing to accept some sort of compromise if it would lead to a resolution.
Robert Galluci, a former diplomat who held talks with the North Koreans last decade, told CNN "the buzz" in Washington was that U.S. special envoy James Kelly -- who heads the U.S. delegation in Beijing -- would be ready to talk to the North Koreans about a step-by-step process to defuse the crisis.
In recent days Pyongyang has signaled a desire to deal, offering to freeze its nuclear activity in return for energy assistance.
But North Korea continues to reject the Bush administration's demands for the unilateral dismantling of its program.
Chinese state-run news Xinhua news agency said North Korea had pledged to work towards a "good result," and called the circumstances of the talks better than the other round.
"We appreciate the efforts done by the Chinese side. We will do our best to make a good result at the talks," North Korea's chief talks delegate Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan was quoted as saying to Wu Donghe, the Chinese ambassador to North Korea, by Xinhua.
Japanese officials quoted Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi as saying North Korea has expressed "readiness" to abolish its nuclear program, in comments carried in the Japanese media.
"He said North Korea had expressed to China its readiness to completely abandon its nuclear development, and said that the freeze was premised on that," Japanese Senior Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Ichiro Aisawa said in a broadcast on the NHK network.
NEW TWIST
North Korea praised its ally China for working to set up and host the talks.
Since the previous round of talks a new twist has developed: Pakistan's revelation that rogue scientist Abdel-Qadeer Khan provided North Korea with technology and know-how to make a uranium-based bomb to complement the country's plutonium-based weapons program.
In recent weeks, progress has been made in connection with the scrapping of other notorious nuclear programs. For example, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has abandoned his nuclear weapons program, and Iran is talking to the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
North Korea, however, has denied the existence of a uranium program, so getting the North to admit it is high on the U.S. agenda.
"I think the uranium enrichment program is the 800-pound gorilla in the negotiating room. You can't solve a problem if you deny that it exists or if you wish it away," Bolton said.
U.S. officials believe North Korea has at least one or two nuclear bombs made from plutonium but some experts doubt it has the ability to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile. North Korea has claimed to have reprocessed 8,000 spent plutonium fuel rods at its main Yongbyon reactor -- enough to build up to six nuclear devices.
Galluci said the key issue is whether the North Koreans -- who he said have uranium-enrichment and plutonium-based programs -- will permit international inspections, transparency, and destruction and dismantlement of programs that exist, and whether other countries will put benefits on the table to spur concessions.
"The question (for North Korea) is not so much what they want, but what they are prepared to give up to get it."
Galluci doesn't believe the makeup of an American government in the coming year will matter much in the U.S. negotiating stance.
He expressed doubt that North Korea would get a better deal from a Democratic administration and he believes North Korea should "make the deal now if they could do it." |
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