North Korea signals willingness to nuclear disarmament program
NORTH Korea demolished the 20m tall cooling towers at its main Yongbyon nuclear reactor on 27 June and published a long-awaited report on its nuclear program signalling its willingness to begin a nuclear disarmament program.
Pyongyang's blowing up of the cooling towers is a dramatic public show of its commitment to the six-nation aid-for-disarmament deal and to the invited foreign media.
The tower was blown up shortly after 1600 local time on Friday, South Korean broadcaster MBC said.
Shortly after Beijing confirmed receiving the North's nuclear declaration on 26 June, the US president George Bush said Washington would start the process of taking Pyongyang off its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"North Korea has begun describing its plutonium-related activities ... It has promised access to the reactor core and waste facilities at Yongbyon, as well as personnel related to its nuclear programme," Bush told reporters at the White House.
The United States is responding to North Korea's actions with two actions of its own. "I'm issuing a proclamation that lifts the provisions of the Trading With The Enemy Act... secondly, I am notifying congress of my intent to rescind North Korea's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism in 45 days."
He added that during the 45-day period the US would "carefully observe North Korea's actions, and act accordingly."
President Bush's remarks came despite close ally Japan expressing its unease over North Korea being taken off the US blacklist before the issue of its citizens abducted by the North in the 1970s and '80s is resolved.
The foreign ministers from the G8 industrial powers urged North Korea to uphold its commitment to abandon all its nuclear weapons and to take "prompt action" to resolve the abduction issue with Japan.
Pyongyang agreed to make a report in October 2007 at six-party talksincluding the US, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and North Koreathat began meeting in 2003 amid growing tensions between the US and North Korea.
North Korea announced that it had a nuclear bomb in 2005, and has since been negotiating with the US to gain security guarantees in exchange for concessions on its nuclear program. Due to disagreements with the US over the contents, North Korea did not file the declaration by the December 31 2007 deadline.
The ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States said it was important to corroborate Thursday's long-awaited declaration presented by North Korea.
In its report North Korea stated that it had produced roughly 40 kg of plutoniumenough for 6 to 10 nuclear bombs, and within the range of 30 to 50 kg expected by US intelligence analysts.
US officials said North Korea had agreed to allow US inspectors to collect independent samples of nuclear waste at Yongbyon, take samples of the reactor core, and access 18,000 pages of operational records.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters at a G8 meeting in Kyoto, Japan that she believed the US had "the means by which to verify the completeness and accuracy of the document."
China's vice-Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, host of the Beijing talks and the first recipient of the North Korean report, said that the US should "implement its obligations to remove the designation of [North Korea] as a state sponsor of terrorism and to terminate application of the Trading with the Enemy Act,"a law banning US companies from trading with states judged hostile to Washingtonwith respect to North Korea.
The removal of North Korea from the US terrorist-sponsor would depend on verification of continued North Korean moves towards its nuclear disarmament, Bush said.
"The two actions the United States is taking will have little impact on North Korea's financial and diplomatic isolation ... All United Nations Security Council sanctions will stay in place as well," he said.
"North Korea must dismantle all of its nuclear facilities, give up its separated plutonium, resolve outstanding questions on its highly enriched uranium and proliferation activities, and end these activities in a way that we can fully verify."
The North Korean report delivered to Chinese officials is a truncated version of a declaration originally sought by Washington.
In a June 26 press conference, Bush said: "The two actions America is taking will have little impact on North Korea's financial and diplomatic isolation. North Korea will remain one of the most heavily sanctioned nations in the world."
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates added: "The reality is there are so many other sanctions on North Korea because of its other behaviours that there's really no practical effect of taking them off the terrorist list."
US officials have also questioned whether the North Korean report discloses all the plutonium it produced, noting the report gives no information about any potential nuclear bombs or its alleged uranium enrichment program.
The administration is trying to appease bitter opposition to any easing of pressure on North Korea from the right wing of the Republican Party. John Bolton, the former Bush administration ambassador to the UN, said the accord was "shameful" and the "final collapse of Bush's foreign policy."
Vice-President Dick Cheney's response was even more remarkable, according to a June 27 account of a foreign policy meeting published in the New York Times. On receiving a question on Korea, Cheney "froze," the newspaper reported.
The Times continued: "For more than 30 minutes he had been taking and answering questions, without missing a beat. But now, for several long seconds, he stared, unsmilingly, at his questioner, Steven Clemons of the New America Foundation [...] Finally he spoke: 'I'm not going to be the one to announce this decision,' the other participants recall Mr. Cheney saying, pointing at himself. 'You need to address your interest in this to the State Department.' He then declared he was done taking questions, and left the room."
The Bush administration's policy towards North Koreaisolating it and threatening it with military force, in order to break up a potential realignment in Northeast Asia unfavourable to US strategic and commercial interestsis in shambles.
With the US military absorbed by bloody and unpopular occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, US geopolitical influence is receding, even as the region's strategic importance grows rapidly.
Some critics of the Bush administration say the report is not a full enough disclosure of what the North Koreans have been up to in the past few years and say Washington is not putting enough pressure on Pyongyang. Officials in the White House however say any development of this kind should be welcomed as a positive move.
The author is a columnist and researcher.
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