U.S., N. Korea Stick to Their Positions in Nuclear Talks

Pyongyang and Washington remained far apart on major issues involving North Korea’s nuclear weapons program following three days of six-party talks that concluded here Friday.

North Korea continued to insist that progress be made by the parties agreeing on “step-by-step measures” in which Pyongyang would be compensated at each juncture, including for any move to freeze and dismantle its weapons program and allow inspections. “The important thing is to take simultaneous actions,” the North’s chief negotiator, Kim Kye Gwan, told reporters.

The United States, on the other hand, has argued that the focus should be on a complete, verifiable dismantling of North Korea’s weapons program.

“Getting into a negotiation for the purpose only of freezing is not something we’re interested in,” said Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator in the talks. “Anything that’s frozen can become unfrozen. We’re not looking for reversible steps.”

In September, North Korea agreed in principle to dismantle its nuclear program in return for aid, security guarantees and diplomatic recognition. This week’s meeting, which also included China, South Korea, Japan and Russia, initiated the far more difficult task of turning principle into practice.

Other significant differences papered over by the September agreement include whether and when North Korea will receive a nuclear reactor for civilian energy production and what to do about a highly enriched uranium program that Pyongyang has never formally acknowledged.

Negotiators said they realized before this week’s talks that three days would not leave enough time to make much progress due to the complexity of the issues involved. But the Chinese hosts pushed for it to keep North Korea engaged, said one official close to the talks. Any hope of extending the meeting was precluded by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Seoul next week.

No date has yet been set for the next meeting -- participants say they hope it will be held before January. “I wouldn’t say this is a failure,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at People’s University in Beijing. “But this will take time. The best we can expect is to reach some vague road map after a couple more rounds of talks.”

Hill told reporters that the six nations will probably agree to form technical committees to avoid seeing the talks get bogged down in the minutia of dismantling and verification.

North Korea called for an end to the U.S. sanctions imposed in October on eight companies accused of trafficking in nuclear, missile or biological weapons technology and raised the issue of Banco Delta Asia. U.S. authorities early last month ordered all American financial institutions to cut their ties to the Macao bank due to suspicions that North Korea was using it for money laundering and counterfeiting. This prompted a run on the bank that forced Chinese authorities to freeze its assets.

“If you are a country that’s going to be engaging in weapons of mass destruction,” Hill told reporters, “you should not be surprised that your financial transactions are going to be carefully scrutinized.”

A senior U.S. official here said that although Washington still supports the six-party talks, North Korea should also be aware the U.S. has options. “While diplomacy is the best way to solve it, it’s not the only way to solve it,” he said. Analysts say other methods include economic sanctions.

The United States will try and exhaust diplomatic options first, the official added, if for no other reason than to convince China, South Korea and Japan that it has acted in good faith.

“To go beyond diplomacy, we can’t do that unilaterally,” he said. “We need to show our partners that we did all we can through diplomatic tracks.”

Japan proposed that the nuclear, economic and bilateral tracks be negotiated separately as a way to break the talks into manageable parts. Russia suggested that North and South Korea designate places they would like inspected, either in each other’s countries or in their own.

The U.S. official said North Korea appeared to understand the broad outline of what was required in the future, offering hope Pyongyang would not boycott the talks as it has in the past. But the U.S. side said North Korea’s decision to continue operating the Yongbyon nuclear facility made negotiations more difficult because it could produce more plutonium with each passing month.

Analysts said it was important to keep expectations low in what has often been a slow process. “It’s not going to be possible to reach agreement in a short period of time,” said Li Dunqiu, a North Korea expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “North Korea and the U.S. don’t trust each other, and both want the other side to take the first step.”

Yin Lijin in The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.