Top US and North Korean nuclear envoys meet in Singapore today to seek a deal in which the North delivers an overdue declaration on its nuclear programs.
US officials have said they do not expect the actual declaration to come out of the meeting between US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and North Korea’s Kim Kye-gwan, who last met about a month ago in Geneva.
Hill has said time was running out for the North to make the declaration, which it was supposed to deliver at the end of last year, and answer US suspicions of having a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons and proliferating nuclear technology and material.
North Korea, which has ratcheted up tensions in the past few days with missile tests and threats to reduce the South to ashes, said it had already made the declaration and the US suspicions were “fictions.”
Moon Chung-in, an expert on North Korea at Yonsei University, said perhaps the best that can be expected from the meeting is a commitment from North Korea to return to the nuclear talks with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US.
If the North makes the declaration, it stands to be removed from a US terrorism blacklist and be better able to tap into international finance that could boost its basket case economy.
Meanwhile Pyongyang said yesterday that South Korea’s new government won’t last if it continues to allow its US-led policy to ruin reconciliation efforts on the Korean Peninsula.
The North’s official Rodong Shinmun newspaper criticized South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s government for “following the US imperialists” and driving inter-Korean relations to catastrophe.
Those who “dance to the whistle of outside forces will only suffer a collapse,” it said in a commentary.
The commentary is the latest in a barrage of North Korea’s criticism of the Lee government, which was inaugurated in February with a pledge to take a tougher line on the North.
Since late last month, the North expelled South Korean officials from a shared industrial complex, test-fired missiles and threatened to suspend reconciliation talks with the South.
Last week, Rodong Shinmun called Lee a “political charlatan.” The newspaper also said Pyongyang has no choice but to build up a nuclear deterrent to protect itself from the US.
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