Uranium remains hot issue of 6-way talks
2004-02-23
North Korea's secret uranium-based nuclear program remains the hottest issue ahead of Wednesday's (Feb. 25) six-party talks, with the North still denying its existence and the United States urging its Cold War foe to acknowledge and dismantle it as both countries jockey for position.
Government officials and experts here agree that the success of the multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear threat in Beijing hinges on how the North addresses the uranium issue.
North Korea should promise to eliminate a highly enriched uranium program in addition to the plutonium program it has previously acknowledged and to allow inspections, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said Sunday in Saudi Arabia, the second leg of his three-nation visit to the Middle East.
"North Korea's nuclear freeze should be the short-term first step toward the ultimate dismantlement of its nuclear programs, including the uranium one, under the precondition of allowing nuclear inspections," Ban said.
Ban, who returns home on Monday, said the uranium issue would be the bone of contention during multilateral nuclear talks, but the disputes might not scuttle the talks if Pyongyang and Washington demonstrated flexibility.
"We need to negotiate how to find common ground between the North's offer of a nuclear freeze and the U.S. claim of complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of N.K. nuclear programs," Ban said.
Pyongyang has insisted it will freeze its nuclear facilities only if Washington removes it from a list of countries suspected of sponsoring terrorism and provides energy and other economic assistance.
Washington wants to see Pyongyang completely eliminate its nuclear weapons programs - both plutonium and uranium - and refuses to offer any rewards only for a nuclear freeze, as such a step was promised earlier.
"The talks could break down if the United States strongly raises the issue and makes it central to the negotiations," said Prof. Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University. "They may find a breakthrough on other issues and discuss it later for the progress of the nuclear solution."
In its latest Foreign Ministry statement on Saturday, North Korea accused the United States of fabricating the charge that it has a uranium-based nuclear weapons program, though a Pakistani scientist recently backed the U.S. claim.
"The story about the enriched uranium program, much touted by the United States, is nothing but a whopping lie," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said.
The agency also denied receiving nuclear secrets from Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan, who said early this month he had transferred nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
The United States has spread the false rumors to make U.S. claims on the program sound plausible, the news agency report said.
Washington officials have said Pyongyang admitted harboring the uranium program in October 2002, instigating the ongoing nuclear tension. They also say the United States has concrete evidence of the program.
Amid unclear prospects for the second round of talks, China urged participants to work for a substantive outcome. China is the host of the talks, which also include the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, chief representative to the talks, told Joseph R. DeTrani, a U.S. special envoy on Korean affairs, Friday that the time had come "to promote a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue."
The first round of talks in August, also in Beijing, ended without any concrete agreement as Pyongyang and Washington stuck to their hard-line stance.
As the fresh round of talks comes after six months of haggling, participants have expressed hopes that they will come up with a mechanism to regularize the talks.
"I want to see if we cannot regularize this in a way so it doesn't just become every six months we'll see if we have meeting," said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Source : www.korea.net
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