Progress could be slow in implementing and verifying the dismantlment of North Korea's nuclear programs, analysts said on Monday, as they warned against over-optimism following the agreement of a six-party statement of principles on how to end the programs.
"It is not true that everything is okay now that the statement has been issued," said Liu Jiangyong (
To expect that Monday's agreement would lead smoothly to a solution of the nuclear issue would be "blind optimism", Liu said.
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
"The consensus now reached is only an intention, which was already quite difficult [to reach]," he added. "In the future, the difficulty is concrete implementation of the agreement."
"It is possible that there could be a time lag because of mutual distrust," Liu said.
US chief negotiator Christopher Hill also said the agreement, issued after more than two years of talks on the nuclear issue, would only begin a long process. "We need to work to see that it's implemented," Hill told reporters.
Zhou Yongsheng (
"But as to when it will be implemented, from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) consistent style, it is hard to say," Zhou said. Zhou highlighted potential pitfalls, including North Korea slowing down or blocking international inspections of its nuclear facilities, and possible failure by other parties to provide energy aid promised to North Korea.
"For example, the DPRK could say they are not getting the energy aid [specified in the agreement], or use other excuses.
"I think China's aid will be implemented, and South Korea is always generous to the DPRK -- its promise is reliable," Zhou said.
"But the US, Japan and Russia -- for these three countries, it's hard to say."
In the agreement, the US, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan also promised to "promote cooperation in the fields of energy, trade and investment" to help improve North Korea's highly underdeveloped, state-run economy.
"We would like to see North Korea have a stronger economy," Hill said. "So I'm sure we will be very much involved, consistent with our undertaking [in the joint statement]."
North Korea has asked the UN World Food Program (WFP) to end its emergency food aid this year and change to development aid, after 10 years of helping the impoverished country to overcome the long-term effects of a famine that is estimated to have killed over 1 million North Koreans in the 1990s.
"We are discussing with the donors if they would be willing to support a transition [to development aid for North Korea]," WFP spokesman Gerry Bourke said on Monday.
The joint statement says all parties should take "coordinated steps" to implement the agreement in line with the principle of "commitment for commitment, action for action". This wording appears to be a compromise to bridge differences over the sequence of implementation between Washington -- which insisted that North Korea must act first -- and Pyongyang, which wanted "simultaneous steps."
Different understandings of the "action for action" principle could well hamper implementation of the agreement. Hill said that the US still expected North Korea to make the first move by ending its nuclear programs, but he admitted that sequencing would be a "very important" issue to be discussed when the six-party talks resume in November.
North Korea had demanded a light-water reactor for energy production as part of the agreement, but the statement said only that the other parties "agree to discuss" the issue.
"At an appropriate time, we are prepared to have a discussion with the other parties about the issue of providing a light-water reactor," said Hill, adding that an appropriate time would be "after the DPRK gets rid of its nuclear program".
"We expect the DPRK to move promptly [to dismantle nuclear facilities]," he said. "We believe there are a lot of incentives on the table for the DPRK."
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, was “amazed” and “enthralled” by Chinese who rise at 3am for work. He praised it as a manifestation of talent and a good work ethic. Truthfully, that praise and statement about China, no matter its motivation, is nothing more than a round of applause for the atrocities inflicted by dictators and the spiritual anesthesia of their victims. “There’s just a lot of super-talented, hard-working people in China that strongly believe in manufacturing,” Musk said in an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday. “And they won’t just be burning the midnight oil, they’ll be
“There’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it,” US President Joe Biden said after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended global geopolitics. Far from Earth, that transition is already happening. Just like in the era of Sputnik and Apollo more than half a century ago, world leaders are again racing to achieve dominance in outer space — but there is one big difference: Whereas the US and the Soviet Union hashed out a common set of rules at the UN, this time around the world’s top superpowers cannot even agree on basic principles to govern
With a Taiwan contingency increasingly more plausible, Taiwanese lobbies in Japan are calling for the government to pass a version of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), emulating the US precedent. Such a measure would surely enable Tokyo to make formal and regular contact with Taipei for dialogue, consultation, policy coordination and planning in military security. This would fill the missing link of the trilateral US-Japan-Taiwan security ties, rendering a US military defense of Taiwan more feasible through the support of the US-Japan alliance. Yet, particular caution should be exercised, as Beijing would probably view the move as a serious challenge to
As the Soviet Union was collapsing in the late 1980s and Russia seemed to be starting the process of democratization, 36-year-old US academic Francis Fukuyama had the audacity to assert that the world was at the “end of history.” Fukuyama claimed that democratic systems would become the norm, and peace would prevail the world over. He published a grandiose essay, “The End of History?” in the summer 1989 edition of the journal National Interest. Overnight, Fukuyama became a famous theorist in the US, western Europe, Japan and even Taiwan. Did the collapse of the Soviet Union mark the end of an era as
RSS