N. Korea reactor shutdown lifts hopes for talks

U.S. special envoy Christopher Hill is no cockeyed optimist, but he emerged from meetings with his North Korean counterpart Tuesday exuding something more than a hint of hope about denuclearization talks with the reclusive communist regime.

“I think we’re all in the same ballpark,” the assistant secretary of State told reporters after sitting down with North Korea’s Kim Kye Gwan.

In some circumstances, that statement might not stand out for its wild-eyed ebullience, but the six-party talks with North Korea have been enough to deaden the expectations of even the most optimistic of participants.

The shutdown last week of North Korea’s only nuclear reactor, at its Yongbyon facility, has lent an air of expectation to the latest round of talks, scheduled to begin today. But even that has been tempered by a realization that the shutdown was, at best, the beginning of what South Korean envoy Chun Yung-woo called “a very difficult and steep road ahead of us.”

“I think the general atmosphere is pretty good,” said Shi Yuanhua, deputy director of the Center for Korean Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. But, he added, “Closing down the Yongbyon reactor is just the beginning of North Korea’s denuclearization.... Will they reopen it again? The road is long and there are too many issues waiting to be solved.”

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear monitor, verified over the weekend that North Korea had shut down the reactor, which is believed to have produced enough plutonium to arm five to 12 nuclear warheads.

The agency confirmed today that remaining facilities at the complex also were shuttered: two dormant construction sites for larger reactors, along with facilities for making reactor fuel and harvesting plutonium for bombs.

The government in Pyongyang had agreed in February to shut down the reactor within 60 days, but delayed while it haggled successfully for a release of more than $20 million in frozen bank assets that the United States regarded as illicit.

Hill has said the shutdown of the reactor is an important first step toward the goal of a nuclear-free North Korea. But analysts warn that it will have to be followed by a painstaking process of negotiation and verification that could take many years.

“Even if President Bush woke up and said, ‘Holy mackerel, I’m going to do everything I can to solve this problem quickly,’ it’s still going to take years,” said Jon B. Wolfsthal, a senior fellow who follows nuclear issues for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

North Korea previously had shut the Yongbyon reactor as part of an agreement with the United States in 1994. But in 2002, it ejected U.N. inspectors, pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and restarted the reactor.

Last October, it conducted an underground nuclear test.

The latest talks are expected to focus on how and when to disable the Yongbyon plant, and on North Korea giving an accounting of what other nuclear materials and equipment it has. In addition to whatever plutonium North Korea has managed to produce at Yongbyon, U.S. officials believe that it also has acquired highly enriched uranium -- also capable of being used in nuclear bombs -- and is likely to have hidden research facilities, weapons plants and other pieces of nuclear infrastructure.

Hill said Tuesday that he was hoping to accomplish this next set of goals by the end of this year, and move on in 2008 to eliminating whatever nuclear material and facilities Pyongyang has declared.

For its part, North Korea wants an end to U.S. sanctions and its designation by Washington as a country that supports terrorism. In addition, its negotiators will be trying to determine how much aid they can wring out of their negotiating partners, who also include China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

One problem for the United States and the other participants is that there is plenty of wiggle room in the terms of the agreement signed in February, so North Korea could negotiate over, for instance, the definition of “disable.”

“So, you know,” said Wolfsthal, anticipating the North Korean argument, “if you want us to put a lock on the door, OK, we can do that pretty cheap. If you want us to pour concrete into the fuel channels, well, that’s going to cost quite a lot.”

mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com

Gu Bo of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report, and Times wire services were used in compiling it.