17 March 1999
TEXT: MARCH 16 BACKGROUND BRIEFING ON U.S.-NORTH KOREA TALKS
(Latest U.S.-North Korea agreement solved specific problem) (1090) New York -- The agreement to allow U.S. inspection of a suspicious underground site in North Korea was directed more at solving an acute problem than starting the process of lifting U.S. sanctions against North Korea, according to a senior U.S. official. During a background briefing following the most recent round of U.S.-North Korea talks in New York March 16, the official said: "This agreement is aimed more at taking the boulder out of the middle of the road. That, had it not been done, I don't know whether we could have gotten on to even that sort of normal process of lifting sanctions on a reciprocal basis." The United States, the official said, has "laid out for the North Koreans a very detailed agenda for what we would like to see occur in order to allow us to lift sanctions. And these are things that are very well-known to people, and these are the steps that would take them off the terrorism list, to restrain their missile programs or to get them to take concrete, tangible steps to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula. If any of those things were to occur, we would reciprocate with an appropriate easing of sanctions." Following is a transcript of the briefing: (begin transcript) Background Briefing U.S.-DPRK Joint Statement U.S. Mission New York March 16, 1999 QUESTION: I have a question on the issue of "satisfactory access," and after your initial access in May, how many additional accesses do you expect? Off-mike: (Can you repeat the question?) SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL: The question is, "what is satisfactory access?" And the answer is that there are two variables or perhaps three variables (inaudible) great deal of negotiating time. The first variable is rather obvious and I think it is what you were asking in your question, which is "how many?" And the answer to that is, as many as necessary. When we request them, we have the North Korean agreement that we will be able to visit the site. The next variable is, "for how long?" And the answer to that is, as long as necessary until the site's future uses have been fully clarified. And the third variable would be, "under what kinds of restrictions?" And in this sense we feel that we have enough freedom at the site to see everything to be sure of what we're seeing. So, as these visits occur, we believe that the results would not be that we'd have to guess at what's there. We think we're going to know quite clearly. And we think that when we form judgments about that, we'll be able to stand by those judgments. QUESTION: As for additional access, do you need to have bilateral talks each time or don't you need that? SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL: No. This agreement encompasses the future visits. Q: Would you comment on how KEDO is moving ahead? Will it be smoother with this agreement? SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL: I believe that this agreement cannot help but improve the atmosphere for all such things, because this was in fact a very substantial suspicion on the part of all the governments involved in KEDO. And since all of these governments are democracies that have to go through an appropriations process in order to get the large sum of money necessary to make good on these commitments -- we are talking about what are the limits, the political limits, to that kind of process. You can't really expect the suspicions to not have an affect, and in the same manner, I expect the removal of those suspicions would have a salutary affect. Q: You stressed you can remove suspicion based on site visits. In the past you have said you had "compelling evidence" that North Korea was engaged in a nuclear activities, (inaudible) but we still have a strong suspicion about North Korea's intentions. (Inaudible.) My question is, if you find another suspected site, will you renegotiate this agreement the same way? SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL: Well. You're asking a question about North Korean intentions and whether there may be other sites, and this is all hypothetical. However, it is certainly true that the United States had very strong suspicions that North Korea's activities at Kumchang-ni, which, if they had continued, would have eventually violated the Agreed Framework. And so it was our goal to ensure that we knew about that site well before that occurred. And we believe that this agreement is going to provide us with that assurance. It does not deal with other sites. It deals only with the site about which we had strong suspicions. If another site emerged and our information had the same level of suspicions attached to it, then we would have to raise it. But I doubt very much that at that hypothetical point in time, that everything would be exactly as it was in late August or last year when we first raised our suspicions about Kumchang-ni and so it's pointless to speculate or conjecture about that kind of hypothetical situation. Q: Does this agreement pave the way for lifting at sanctions against North Korea? How soon do you expect that to happen? SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL: At this point, we have laid out for the North Koreans a very detailed agenda for what we would like to see occur in order to allow us to lift sanctions. And these are things that are very well-known to people, and these are the steps that would take them off the terrorism list, to restrain their missile programs or to get them to take concrete, tangible steps to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula. If any of those things were to occur, we would reciprocate with an appropriate easing of sanctions. This agreement is aimed more at taking the boulder out of the middle of the road. That, had it not been done, I don't know whether we could have gotten on to even that sort of normal process of lifting sanctions on a reciprocal basis. Q: Is the U.S. limited as to how many Americans can go visit a site? SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL: There are a number of details about how we will conduct these visits which are not sensitive. We have discussed what we thought would be a reasonable size for a delegation and the North Korean side has agreed to it. Thank you. (end transcript)
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