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Senior U.S. and North Korean diplomats
have begun landmark talks in New York on normalizing relations as part of
the agreement under which Pyongyang has agreed to scrap its nuclear
program. U.S. officials say they will press for a full disclosure of all
North Korean nuclear projects including a disputed uranium-enrichment
effort. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State
Department.
The talks beginning late Monday at the U.S. mission to the United
Nations are the highest-level U.S.-North Korean meeting on American soil
since 2000, when Pyongyang sent a senior envoy to Washington near the end
of the Clinton administration.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and North Korean
Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-Kwan will be setting up a working group
intended to open the way to normalization of relations under the nuclear
deal reached last month in Beijing.
The February 13 agreement at the Chinese-sponsored six-party talks
obligates North Korea to shut down its main nuclear facility at Yongbyon
within 60 days in exchange for 50,000 tons of fuel oil.
Over the long term in the multi-stage accord, North Korea is to declare
and irreversibly end all aspects of its nuclear program for a million tons
of oil or equivalent aid and other benefits including normal relations
with Washington.
North Korea conducted a nuclear test last October with a device
intelligence officials believe was made from plutonium harvested from the
Yongbyon reactor. But the United States believes North Korea also had a
parallel enriched-uranium project and admitted its existence during a
visit by a U.S. envoy in 2002.
In a talk with reporters, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack
reiterated a statement by Assistant Secretary Hill on Sunday that North
Korea needs to account for, and eliminate, all aspects of its nuclear
program including the uranium project:
"I refer you to the intelligence community for their assessment of the
state and nature of that H.E.U. [highly-enriched uranium] program, but
none-the-less we believe there is one," he said. "The North Koreans have
admitted to one and they, in the process of denuclearization, would need
to come clean on that program and eventually dismantle that program, along
with their other nuclear programs."
After the October 2002 visit by U.S. envoy James Kelly, North Korea
denied having an enriched-uranium bomb project, and a senior intelligence
official told Congress earlier this month U.S. officials are not
highly-confident North Korea ever produced uranium suitable for a bomb.
Assistant Secretary Hill, who was chief U.S. envoy to the six-party
talks, says the working group he will set up with his North Korean
counterpart will establish an agenda for normalizing relations, including
what will be required for removing North Korea from the U.S. list of state
sponsors of terrorism.
North Korea has been listed as a terrorism sponsor since 1988 but the
State Department said in its most recent annual report on the issue that
Pyongyang is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the
bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987.
The February 13 six-party accord has come under criticism from U.S.
conservatives, notably John Bolton of the American Enterprise Institute,
who until late last year was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
In a Wall Street Journal commentary, Bolton faulted the deal for
relying excessively on the International Atomic Energy Agency for
verification of North Korean compliance.
He said North Korea's record of what he termed "aggressive mendacity"
requires the most intrusive of verification systems and that if the
current approach is followed, in his words, an "already bad deal will
become a dangerous deal." | 
