The world welcomed North Korea's decision to attend nuclear crisis talks this month but analysts warned yesterday that Pyongyang may still stall when the time comes for taking tough decisions.
Most agreed that pressure from China was the most likely explanation for North Korea's abrupt decision to end six months of stalemate and announce that it would take part in a new round of talks on Feb. 25.
Analysts say the biggest stumbling block to progress at the talks will be North Korea's alleged uranium enrichment program.
The Stalinist state says that it will bring to the negotiating table an offer to freeze its plutonium-producing nuclear complex at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang.
But when it comes to the uranium progam, which Washington says must be declared, the Stalinist state remains in complete denial.
"The North strongly denies the existence of a nuclear weapons program based on highly enriched uranium, there will be a lot of dispute in the meeting," said Moon Jung-in, political science professor at Yonsei University.
US charges that North Korea was pursuing uranium enrichment triggered the current nuclear crisis in October 2002. Pyongyang had agreed to freeze its plutonium-producing under a 1994 accord with Washington that ended previous nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.
According to the US, North Korea confessed to running the uranium program when confronted with US evidence by US envoy James Kelly in Pyongyang 15 month ago.
Depite Pyongyang's denials, recent admissions by Pakistani nuclear scientists that they had passed nuclear secrets to Pyongyang bolster the US charges.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb who was a frequent visitor to Pyongyang in the 1990s, has confessed along with other Pakistani scientists to passing nuclear know-how to North Korea.
Kim Sung-Han, a North Korean expert at Seoul's Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, said the talks will collapse if Pyongyang refuses to acknowledge its uranium program.
Most analysts say that chances of a breakthrough at the talks are slim and that North Korea is merely playing for time in a crucial election year in the US.
"North Korea will play for time until the end of the US presidential election and seek new negotiations from scratch," said Lee Chul-Ki of Dongguk University.
Chun Hyun-Jun of the state-financed Korea Institute for National Unification said: "It is difficult to expect any substantial outcome from the talks as North Korea is trying to make out where the US presidential election is going while Washington has no mind to hurry."
In the meantime North Korea is expecting to recoup rewards merely for showing up at the talks, even though Washington insists that it will make no concessions to the Stalinist state until it scraps its nuclear weapons programs.
China recently offered a US$50 million economic aid package to North Korea, and South Korea is currently hosting inter-Korean talks on economic exchanges with Pyongyang.
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