North Korea nuclear talks enter uncharted territory

By Brian Rhoads

BEIJING (Reuters) – North Korea nuclear crisis talks enter
uncharted territory on Saturday, with the six parties sitting
down with hopes of drafting their first joint statement to cap
the longest negotiating session yet.

The main protagonists, the United States and North Korea,
appear as entrenched as ever, diplomats say, with Pyongyang
sticking to its demands for security guarantees and aid and
Washington insisting the nuclear programs be dismantled first.

Still, the first round of talks in more than a year has
seen an unprecedented level of contact between the U.S. and
North Korean sides, who have met for talks five times already
this week after refusing to budge from scripted position
statements in three previous rounds.

The talks have come a long way from the early days of the
administration of George W. Bush, in which the president
labeled North Korea part of an “axis of evil” alongside Iran
and pre-war Iraq, or even early this year when his secretary of
state called Pyongyang an “outpost of tyranny.”

This time the talks involving the two Koreas, the United
States, Russia, Japan and the host nation, China, have remained
open-ended. If lacking in major concessions so far, they have
featured a more thorough airing of viewpoints that the parties
hope could point to possible consensus.
“I think there is a growing consensus that where we end up is
denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, that is, no nuclear
weapons, no nuclear weapons programs, in the Korean peninsula.
No nuclear programs that can conceivably be nuclear weapons
programs,” U.S. chief negotiator Christopher Hill said.

The six parties would start drafting a joint statement on
Saturday, to be spearheaded by China, a Japanese delegate said,
adding talks were likely to last through the weekend.

Previous rounds have failed to secure joint statements.

LONG HAUL

The nuclear standoff erupted in October 2002 when U.S.
officials accused Pyongyang of pursuing a clandestine weapons
program, prompting it to expel U.N. nuclear inspectors.

On Feb. 10 this year North Korea announced that it had
nuclear weapons. It demanded Washington provide aid, security
guarantees and diplomatic recognition in return for scrapping
them. The United States demands the nuclear programs be
abandoned first.

Hill said on Friday he was prepared for a long haul. “We
have a lot of differences that remain, so I don’t want to
suggest for a minute that we are, you know, this is going to be
easy,” he said.

All sides are committed in principle to a nuclear-free
peninsula. The crux of the disagreement is over timing, whether
Pyongyang should receive the security guarantees and aid before
it moves to scrap its weapons programs.

The North has also demanded Washington remove nuclear
weapons from the peninsula. The United States, which keeps some
30,000 troops in South Korea, says it no longer has such
weapons there.

Some diplomats suggest that whether or not a joint
statement is reached at the fourth round of talks, the parties
can still declare success due to the unprecedented level of
contact between North Korea and the United States.