US experts supervising the disabling of North Korea's nuclear plants have made a good start and the North has been very cooperative, the leader of their team said yesterday.
Pyongyang's action to roll back its atomic program, after half a century of research and development, follows a February six-nation accord under which it will receive major aid and diplomatic benefits for full denuclearization.
US State Department official Sung Kim, who heads up the nine-strong team overseeing the unprecedented operation which began on Monday at the North's Yongbyon complex, arrived in Seoul yesterday to brief officials.
Asked by reporters if the North had been cooperative, Kim said: "Yes, very cooperative."
He added: "I think we are off to a good start. I hope to achieve all the disablement, at least this phase of disablement, by December 31."
A key priority is the reactor at Yongbyon, the source of the plutonium used in the communist state's nuclear test in October of last year.
Kim said work had been done at the reactor and the complex's other main facilities, a reprocessing plant and a fuel fabrication plant.
The North shut down the reactor in July. Disablement, scheduled for completion by year-end, aims to make it and other facilities unusable for at least a year while talks on total denuclearization continue.
Pyongyang will receive energy aid worth hundreds of millions of dollars in return for disablement and a full declaration of all its nuclear programs, including a suspected highly enriched uranium project.
"So far, so good," said South Korea's chief nuclear envoy Chun Yung-Woo.
The declaration of programs is "much more important" than the disabling of nuclear facilities, he said.
"In the declaration, there are many factors that should be clarified -- for instance, the uranium enrichment program (UEP) and the plutonium programs too. The key is how precise and complete the declaration will be," Chun said.
US claims in 2002 that the North was operating a covert highly enriched uranium program to make weapons fuel, in addition to the plutonium operation, led to the collapse of a 1994 nuclear disarmament deal.
The two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia have been haggling since August 2003 on making the North nuclear-free.
If North Korea goes on next year to dismantle the plants and give up its entire plutonium stockpile and all its nuclear weapons, it can expect normalized relations with Washington and a peace pact to replace the 1950-1953 Korean War armistice.
Another incentive is the North's removal from Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism.
This designation prevents the North from receiving US economic assistance, and also blocks loans from the World Bank and other multilateral organizations.
At a meeting in Beijing between the chief US and North Korean nuclear negotiators on Oct. 31, Washington gave Pyongyang "concrete" terms for its removal from the terror list, Yonhap news agency said.
Those terms included "not only implementing 11 concrete measures aimed at disabling the nuclear facilities by year-end but also clarifying the UEP based on more convincing evidence," a government official told the agency in Boston.
The Yonhap reporter was accompanying South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon on a US visit.
In a speech on Monday at Harvard University, Song cautioned that negotiators were "entering untrodden territory" in dealing with nuclear disablement.
"Thus, we may hit a snag anytime," he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese