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North Korea Nuclear Disarmament Talks Resume

By Luis Ramirez
Beijing
13 September 2005

Delegates of six nations have resumed negotiations on North Korea's nuclear weapons programs. As the talks resumed after a month's recess, attention was focused on North Korea's insistence that it has the right to a peaceful nuclear program - a stance the United States opposes.

Representatives from Japan, Russia, the two Koreas and the United States joined their Chinese hosts for a banquet Tuesday to relaunch the talks in Beijing. U.S. envoy Christopher Hill told reporters he hopes the North Koreans have come to the table with a clear position.

"I can't say, really, that there's been progress. We certainly have a better idea of what their position is, although I must tell you that their position does seem to be evolving a little," he said.

However, the official Chinese news agency Tuesday quoted the head of the North Korean delegation, Kim Gye-gwan, as repeating Pyongyang's claim that the country has a right to "peaceful nuclear activity."

The United States rejects this claim, citing Pyongyang's record of breaking past international nuclear agreements.

These talks are the continuation of a fourth round of negotiations meant to resolve the dispute, in which the United States and others are calling on North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions. The previous three rounds failed to produce anything more than agreements to meet again.

International relations professor Ken Boutin, an expert on Asian security issues at Deakin University in Australia, says that with distrust still running deep between North Korea and the United States, this round could produce similar results.

"Essentially, they're still talking about talking, and it's a question of developing a framework at this point that would allow the two sides to discuss these issues in much more substantive terms, laying a basis, if you will, for future discussions and negotiations," he said.

Participants and observers say the aim this time is to come up with a joint statement on set of very basic principles on which to base future negotiations.

The United States has called on North Korea to give up its nuclear programs in a verifiable manner, saying its failure to do so will only prolong Pyongyang's international isolation.

U.S. officials have described the six-way negotiations process as the best way to resolve the crisis peacefully.

In remarks to The New York Times newspaper this week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the North Koreans can expect to have "a road toward normalization of relations" with the United States - one of Pyongyang's expressed wishes - if, in her words, they make "the strategic choice to give up" their nuclear weapons programs.