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U.S. Encouraged by Latest Round of Six-Party Talks, Hill Says

10 August 2005

North Korea appears willing to give up nuclear weapons and related systems

By Jane Morse
Washington File Staff Writer

The fourth round of Six-Party Talks in Beijing broke after 13 days, failing to reach a final agreement, but the chief U.S. negotiator for the discussions, which are aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, is not discouraged.

During an August 9 interview on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill said it is encouraging that the North Koreans have agreed to come back to the table August 29, especially since they had stayed away for some 13 months before the talks resumed July 26.

"It's pretty clear that they are prepared to do away with these weapon systems and it's pretty clear they're willing to do away with the systems related to the weapons systems," he told Margaret Warner of PBS's "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" program. 

"But, you know, to be sure we still have some differences with them," he cautioned.

One of those major differences, Hill said, is North Korea's desire to maintain a civilian nuclear energy program and to build light water reactors. "These are reactors that are a little more difficult to make bombs out of, but by no means impossible to make bombs out of," he explained. 

None of the other participants at the talks were willing to give the North Koreans such reactors, according to Hill.  South Korea, however, is offering to provide the North with conventional electrical power, he said.

North Korea currently has a graphite-moderated nuclear reactor near the city of Yongbyon, about 100 kilometers north of the capital, Pyongyang.  This type of equipment, similar to that which caused the 1986 disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine, is both unstable and capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons.

According to Hill, the draft agreement now under discussion makes "very clear that North Korea needs to get out of the nuclear business, then get back into the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty)."  North Korea withdrew from the NPT in 2003.

What steps are to be taken and when is still under question, Hill said.  "We're looking at how we can sort of speed up the time lines, how we can get them to denuclearize as soon as possible….  (B)ut I must say we don't have any final agreement on sequencing."

Once principles can be agreed upon, Hill said, "the next stage would be to see how you put those principles together in an agreement." 

A transcript of Hill’s interview is available on PBS’s Web site.

For additional information, see U.S. Policy Toward North Korea.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)