Posted on 10/22/2005 9:39:03 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Saturday October 22, 5:34 PM
Hill likely to give up visiting N. Korea, faces U.S. hard-liners
(Kyodo) _ Christopher Hill, the top U.S. negotiator for the six-party nuclear talks, is likely to give up his plan to visit North Korea before the six meet for the fifth round in early November, U.S. and other six-party sources said Saturday.
The sources attributed it to the tough conditions set by hard-liners in the U.S. administration who are insisting on the need for the visit to produce such concrete results as Pyongyang halting operations at its Yongbyon nuclear complex.
A U.S. congressional source said Vice President Dick Cheney has expressed his reluctance to allow the planned visit by Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, to go ahead.
The hard-liners have been displeased with a joint statement of principles agreed and issued by the six parties after their fourth round last month in Beijing because it mentioned such benefits as discussing the provision of a light-water nuclear reactor in exchange for North Korea committing to abandon all its nuclear weapons and programs.
The administration of President George W. Bush has continued to refuse the provision of two light-water reactors pledged by the previous government of President Bill Clinton in exchange for Pyongyang freezing and eventually dismantling its weapons-grade facilities under a 1994 bilateral accord.
Hill has been pressing for a negotiated resolution to North Korea's nuclear ambitions by using the joint statement as the impetus to boost the six-party talks, which also include China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
The sources said the State Department has been seeking to arrange Hill's visit for the first week in November and set up meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's aides, including First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, who are ranked higher than the North Korean chief delegate to the six-party talks, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan.
The planned visit is aimed at paving the way for the fifth round to make progress on the most contentious issue of sequencing the implementation of North Korea's commitments.
But the hard-liners are focused on verification and inspections of the nuclear dismantlement, the sources said.
Against this backdrop, they are stressing the need for Hill's planned visit to yield achievements such as North Korea suspending operations of an experimental graphite-moderated reactor in Yongyang and admitting the alleged existence of a uranium enrichment program, the sources said.
Their insistence has in effect placed conditions on any visit by Hill to North Korea, raising the possibility that the trip will not be realized, a six-party negotiation source said.
Under these circumstances, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "has become cautious" about the planned visit, another six-party negotiation source said.
A U.S. government source said the situation could have changed toward realizing the visit if North Korea showed signs of compromise during New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's visit to Pyongyang earlier this week.
But North Korea did not signal its readiness to halt the operations of the experimental reactor, the source said.
Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo where he stopped over after his visit, Richardson said high-level North Korean officials told him that Pyongyang would return unconditionally to the six-party talks, possibly in the first week of November.
In the mean time, DLI(Defense Language Institute) is churning out Korean language specialists in record speed. 2006 will be an interesting time in Korean peninsula.
Ping!
Nothing in the story addressed that. Did you make it up, or do you have a source for that statement?
Obviously not from this article. I came across this information from two other sources. I did not seek for it. I stumbled onto it.
I bet Jimmah Carter is not amused over this news LOL!
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