North Korea hopes to collect additional aid from a group of nations by throwing up another roadblock in the denuclearization process, South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 13).
(Nov. 14) -
South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan yesterday said North Korea is dragging its feet toward denuclearization (Jung Yeon-je/Getty Images).
Pyongyang said this week it had not accepted the collection of nuclear samples as part of an agreement for verifying its atomic activities and holdings, the Associated Press reported. The verification process would be the next step in carrying out the 2007 agreement in which North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear sector in exchange for economic, diplomatic and security benefits from China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
The process has appeared near collapse on several occasions as the parties have disagreed over details of the agreement's obligations.
The latest standoff is the result of a standard North Korean negotiating ploy, Yu said. Pyongyang consistently provokes "a small crisis before resolving a certain issue, and receiving something in the process of resolving it," he said.
The United States says North Korea agreed to sampling and is working to resolve the matter. The nations in the six-party process are expected to meet at some point to prepare a formal verification plan, though Pyongyang has also expressed reservations about such a written document (Kwang-Tae Kim, Associated Press/PR-inside.com, Nov. 13).
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congressional Research Service last week warned about the potential effects of the Bush administration's October decision to remove North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, the Yomiuri Shimbunreported. The removal resulted from Pyongyang's agreement to allow verification.
North Korea is believed to have supported Iran's nuclear program, which Western nations suspect is aimed at developing a weapons capability, and has provided military aid for the militant Shiite organization Hezbollah, according to the report.
Following delisting, "the United States will no longer have the terrorism support list as a negotiating lever if it ever decided to address (the issue of) North Korean activities in the Middle East in negotiations with Pyongyang," the report says.
North Korea might also export some of its nuclear operations to Iran to skirt certain obligations under the denuclearization deal, said CRS specialist Larry Niksch (Satoshi Ogawa, Yomiuri Shimbun, Nov. 14).