Here's a new twist on the ever more tangled negotiations intended to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions: The nuclear plant Pyongyang is supposed to shut down in return for oil and other concessions is barely in operation and the North Koreans want to get rid of it.
Informants who have been in North Korea or have access to intelligence reports say the walls of the plant are crumbling, machinery is rusting and maintenance of the electric power plant, roads and warehouses that sustain the plant has been neglected. North Korea's impoverished economy just cannot support that operation.
Moreover, its technology is 50 years old and obsolete. It was acquired, possibly by Russian spies, by the Soviet Union from the British in the 1950s, then passed to North Korea in the 1980s. The North Koreans are anxious to replace it with something more modern and are expected to demand that later.
In the six-party talks on Feb. 13, North Korea agreed with the US, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea to "shut down and seal" in 60 days their nuclear facility at Yongbyon, 95km north of Pyongyang. In return, they would get "energy assistance equivalent to 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil."
In short, North Korea bargained away a limping nuclear plant as if it were a valuable property -- some informants speculate that it has already stopped operating. Whether the US and other delegates were aware of the plant's condition or were deceived is not clear. Whatever the case, no one should be surprised as deception has long been a standard North Korean negotiating tactic.
The North Koreans also agreed last month to furnish "a list of all its nuclear programs" to the other five nations in the talks. Those who have dealt with the North Koreans, however, said they would identify only those facilities they thought the US knew about. The rest are so well hidden that even high-tech satellites can't find them.
To further complicate things, the North Koreans have upped their demands beyond what they agreed to last month. An influential Chinese academic, Zhang Liangui (張蓮桂) of the Chinese Communist Party School's International Strategic Research Institute, was quoted in a Shanghai newspaper last week as saying North Korea "is gradually asking for higher prices."
Using North Korea's formal name, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), he said the North Korean demand that they have in hand the US$25 million previously frozen in a Macau bank before they would shut down the Yongbyon facility "is only a symptom of a trend."
As if on cue, the next day a North Korean newspaper published in Tokyo asserted: "The stark reality is that even after the `13 February' agreement, the DRPK and the United States are still in hostile relations."
The DPRK, the Choson Sinbo continued, "has consistently maintained its position that the United States should physically prove that it has changed its hostile policy."
Experienced Korea hands explained that meant withdrawing US military forces from South Korea and Japan, abrogating the US security treaties with Japan and South Korea, negotiating a peace treaty to replace the truce that ended the Korean War of 1950 to1953, ending all financial sanctions on North Korea and establishing full fledged diplomatic relations.
The US view of the process is almost exactly the opposite: Once the North has begun to shut down its nuclear plants, liaison offices would be opened in Washington and Pyongyang. If further progress toward ending North Korea's nuclear arms program followed, then financial sanctions would be lifted and embassies would be set up.
Far down the road, after a peace treaty was signed, the US might reduce its forces in South Korea if the North Koreans agreed to pull back their forces from the demilitarized zone that divides the peninsula. The US is anxious to reduce its forces in South Korea anyway, and possibly to withdraw them entirely. Ending the US security treaty with South Korea would be up to Seoul to decide.
There is no way anytime in the foreseeable future that the US would agree to pull its forces out of Japan, abrogate the US-Japan security treaty and withdraw the US Navy from the Western Pacific. If anything, the US is seeking to strengthen its security ties with Japan and to enlarge its bases on Guam.
It would be an understatement, then, to say the outlook for progress lacks promise.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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