North Korea nuclear talks end without a timeline

North Korea nuclear talks end without a timeline
By Mark Magnier, Times Staff Writer
11:27 AM PDT, July 20, 2007

Talks aimed at shutting down North Korea's nuclear weapons program ended today with no concrete timeline and a host of difficult questions obscuring the road ahead.
Negotiators put a favorable spin on the three days of meetings, praising the "businesslike" attitude of participants and the fact that everyone stuck to the matter at hand — a reference to North Korea's history of diatribes, feints, accusations and other disruptive negotiating tactics.
But a year-end deadline proposed by the U.S. delegation for North Korea to come clean on its nuclear weapons stockpile, atomic research programs, stored components, secret facilities and other capabilities proved elusive. North Korea pledged in February to dismantle its atomic weapons capability in return for aid, trade and diplomatic recognition.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he still believed a full North Korean disclosure was possible by late December. "But obviously it's going to be difficult," Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator, told reporters before leaving Beijing.
Chinese officials said the parties agreed to convene working groups on several technical issues by the end of August, hold another round of six-nation talks by September and move to schedule a ministerial meeting "as soon as possible" thereafter in a bid to maintain momentum.
Among the issues facing the working groups will be disarmament details, energy aid and North Korea's thorny relations with the United States and Japan.
North Korea pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003 after expelling U.N. inspectors. After years of ineffectual talks involving China, the U.S., Japan, Russia and North and South Korea, the North agreed in February to close its Yongbyon nuclear facility north of Pyongyang, the capital, in return for an initial shipment of 50,000 tons of fuel oil. The impoverished nation stands to get another 950,000 tons when it disables its atomic facilities and discloses its nuclear secrets.
Analysts say they're not surprised that the talks have bogged down, given the number of problems on the horizon. "I refer to these as the 'five doubts,' " said Scott Snyder, senior associate with the Asia Foundation in Washington.
One is whether the Bush administration is willing to move far enough along on normalizing relations to satisfy North Korea. The communist country is pushing to be taken off the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism as soon as possible. That could take time, however, because such a move would face significant opposition from critics in Washington and beyond.
Ditto on the trade and economic front, analysts say, as the U.S. grapples with whether and how quickly to ease restrictions against the North outlined under the Trading With the Enemy Act.
Another big concern is whether North Korea will come clean in any declaration — particularly about its enriched-uranium program, which is not easily subject to satellite detection and therefore relatively easy to hide.
Analysts say they also expect differences between Pyongyang and the five other parties over how and what constitutes a "dismantling" of the Yongbyon facility. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said this week that North Korea had closed five main nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, completing the first stage of the February deal. Making them inoperable, however, is far more difficult.
Finally, analysts say they will be watching closely to see whether North Korea demands a civilian light-water reactor before it completes its end of the bargain or finds other ways to raise the ante.
At the heart of the negotiations is whether Pyongyang wants to end its isolation and join the rest of the world or is playing more diplomatic games. The Bush administration has displayed more flexibility in recent months by sending Hill to Pyongyang in June and helping release more than $20 million in blocked North Korean funds from a Macao bank.
"North Korea is often its own worst enemy," said Peter Beck, analyst in Seoul with the International Crisis Group, a think tank. "They're the master of playing a bad hand well. But they're also the master of overplaying their hand."
If the North does want to open up, analysts say, this may be a good time. Both the U.S. and South Korea have leaders near the end of their tenures who are suffering in polls and searching for foreign policy success to bolster their legacies.
An example of how interlocking and subject to slippage many of these negotiations are, however, can be seen in the hoped-for declaration of North Korea's nuclear capabilities.
On the one hand, the Bush administration has an interest in advising North Korea on what it's looking for in a declaration to ensure "full disclosure." But if Washington discloses too much about what it knows, Pyongyang could figure out what the U.S. doesn't know, allowing the militaristic state to hide more of its capabilities.
But analysts say Pyongyang has potential concerns of its own. If it provides too complete a picture too early, Washington could use the information to target North Korean facilities for potential airstrikes.
mark.magnier@latimes.com