Pyongyang Presses Seoul, Washington in Energy Aid Talks

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- Amid the stalemate in the six-party talks, South and North Korean nuclear envoys held their first meeting in two months on Sept. 19 -- the third anniversary of a multinational deal to end the communist nation's nuclear programs -- to discuss energy aid to the North.

But North Korean officials demanded that the U.S. stop demanding an
"unacceptable" verification regime and immediately take Pyongyang off the terror
list. North Korean officials also dismissed as complete nonsense rampant reports
on the reclusive nation's leader Kim Jong-il's latest health setbacks.
The denuclearization process is currently in a stalemate as North Korea
reportedly prepares to restart its main plutonium-producing reactor that had been
disabled under the agreements. The move is viewed as aimed at putting pressure on
the U.S. to take Pyongyang off the list of terrorism sponsors. Washington has
asked Pyongyang to first cooperate in a plan to verify its recent nuclear
declaration.
During a meeting at the truce village of Panmunjom, the North Korean envoy to the
energy talks, Hyon Hak-bong, said that his country is making "thorough
preparations" to restart its main plutonium-producing facilities in Yongbyon.
In addition, Hyon, deputy chief of the U.S. affairs bureau at the North's Foreign
Ministry, said that the latest reports on the health setbacks of leader Kim
Jong-il "are the mere sophistry of bad people who do not want our country to fare
well."
He was briefly talking to a group of South Korean reporters shortly after walking
across the inter-Korean border to attend talks on energy aid. The one-day meeting
between the two Koreas, proposed by Pyongyang, was aimed at implementing a
disarmament deal agreed upon last year at the six-way talks on Pyongyang's
nuclear program.
On Sept. 19 three years ago, North Korea signed an agreement with its dialogue
partners in the six-way talks to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for
political incentives and massive economic assistance. Its partners are South
Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan.
"North Korea proposed the meeting this time," a South Korean Foreign Ministry
official said before the meeting. "The resumption of the talks is meaningful in
itself, and we will closely watch the North's stance."
The five nations promised to provide 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil or its
equivalent to the energy-starved communist state, of which nearly half has been
delivered so far. South Korea chairs an energy aid working group under the
six-party framework.
The North agreed to complete the disabling of the Yonbyon reactor by October,
while the other nations are committed to wrapping up the delivery of fuel oil and
energy-related equipment by the same month.
North Korea announced on Aug. 26 that it had halted the disabling of the reactor
and planned to restore it. Less than a week later, the North took equipment out
of storage in what was seen as the initial steps to reactivate the reactor, which
had been disabled under its compromise with the other six-party partners.
He emphasized that the North submitted a list detailing its nuclear activity as
agreed in the Oct. 3 agreement last year and completed about 90 percent of the
disabling. But the U.S. has yet to provide promised political incentives,
especially the removal from the list, he said.
Hyon called it a breach of the six-way agreement, which is based on the principle
of action-for-action. "The U.S. is seeking to visit (nuclear) sites at random
without prior notice, collect samples, and analyze them with related equipment.
It means coercive inspection," he claimed.
He said Washington's request is reminiscent of its pre-war activity in Iraq.
"Look at Iraq. The U.S. ransacked Iraq, even its presidential palace, arguing
weapons of mass destruction exist there based on false intelligence reports," he
pointed out. "After all, the U.S. invaded Iraq. It is a serious matter. The
fundamental problem lies here."
Hyon's South Korean counterpart, Hwang Joon-kook, expressed worries that the
denuclearization process is taking a backward step. "We expect the verification
issue to make progress and the disabling and the energy aid to be implemented as
planned," said Hwang, director general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's
North Korean nuclear issue bureau.



.