North Korea to aid American study on nuclear deal http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-03-06T102930Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-290092-1.xml&archived=False
Tue Mar 6, 2007
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korean negotiator Kim Kye-gwan has agreed to cooperate with a project by former U.S. officials that seeks to apply lessons learned from an aborted 1994 U.S. nuclear agreement to possible future deals with Pyongyang and Tehran, participants said on Monday. Kim, vice foreign minister and highest-ranking North Korean official to visit the United States since 2000, discussed the project at breakfast in New York on Sunday with the three former officials who dealt closely with North Korea.
"He was positive and enthusiastic and promised his full cooperation," including facilitating a visit and interviews in North Korea, Charles Kartman, former top negotiator with North Korea in the Clinton administration, told Reuters.
The project, under the auspices of Columbia University's Weatherhead East Asian Institute, is expected to produce a history of the Korean Peninsula Economic Development Organization (KEDO) and follow-up conferences. The breakfast was among a number of private meetings between former U.S. officials, Asian experts and Kim in the run-up to U.S.-North Korea talks on Monday and Tuesday.
The talks are aimed at normalizing diplomatic relations as part of a Feb. 13 agreement under which North Korea pledged anew to scrap its nuclear arms programs for aid and other benefits.
Under the 1994 U.S.-North Korea agreement, KEDO, a multinational consortium involving the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union, was building two light-water nuclear energy reactors in North Korea until the deal collapsed in late 2002-early 2003.
LIGHT-WATER REACTORS
Pyongyang had halted work at its Yongbyon complex -- its main nuclear weapons-producing facility -- for eight years in return for the more proliferation-resistant light-water reactors and supplies of heavy fuel oil. The project was worth about $5 billion in total.
The light-water reactor complex, now one-third complete, sits idle. KEDO is expected to close its New York office in about a month. Whether it might be revived under the new North Korea deal is unclear. North Korea resumed nuclear weapons production and tested its first nuclear device in October. Although the 1994 agreement was strongly opposed by the Bush administration, Kartman, who went from the State Department to head KEDO, believes it had value. So do Robert Carlin, an intelligence analyst who was KEDO's senior adviser, and Joel Wit, who coordinated implementation of the 1994 deal. "It was a very unique effort to apply a multinational institution to solving a specific regional problem," Kartman said.
Current efforts to persuade North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear ambitions all involve multinational negotiations and anticipate solutions involving multiple countries.
"Multilateral cooperation on a complex technical and commercial project isn't something magical that drops from the sky," said Carlin.
"One of lessons we learned is if the diplomats don't begin thinking about this part of the implementation phase early, almost before the agreement is done, then a lot of problems crop up later that slow things down ... and the agreement begins to waffle," he said.
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