North Korean Call to Open Reactor Seals 'Regrettable,' Han Says
- 관리자
- 2008.09.29
- Hit 3513
"That's very much an area we're worried about, because this is a return to the old times, and they are not going to continue with the disablement process,'' Han said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in New York yesterday. "At this juncture North Korea's action is very regrettable.''
Disarmament talks stalled last month when North Korea stopped disabling Yongbyon to protest delays in being removed from a U.S. terrorism blacklist. President George W. Bush says North Korea, which tested a nuclear device in 2006, must allow international inspectors to verify the extent of its atomic program before the nation can be removed from the list.
North Korean authorities asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to remove the seals at Yongbyon to "enable them to carry out tests at the reprocessing plant, which they say will not involve nuclear material,'' IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said in Vienna yesterday.
Work to restore the plant has "in effect begun,'' North Korea's Foreign Ministry envoy Hyun Hak Bong said last week at a meeting with South Korean government officials in Panmunjom, a village in the demilitarized zone between the countries.
China's Role
China should play a more active part in ending the delay in the disarmament process, Han said.
"As the chair of the six-party talks, China has played a very important and constructive role so far,'' he said. "We hope that China will play another important role in trying to bring North Korea back to the table to settle this issue.''
Bush spoke with Chinese President Hu Jintao yesterday, expressing concern about North Korea's announcement that it planned to restore the nuclear plant to its original state.
"The two presidents agreed that they would work hard to convince the North to continue down the path established in the six-party talks toward denuclearization,'' White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in an e-mailed statement.
South Korea, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia are trying to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
They reached an agreement in February 2007 when North Korea said it would disable its nuclear programs in return for normalized diplomatic ties with the U.S. and Japan and fuel aid. It agreed to disable the five-megawatt Yongbyon reactor, the source of the regime's weapons-grade plutonium, last October and blew up a cooling tower at the site in June.
'Tough Line'
"We are seeing a tough line in the last month from them,'' Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. nuclear negotiator, said yesterday, referring to North Korea's decision to stop disabling work at Yongbyon. "It's a rough and tumble moment in the negotiating process.''
Hill is in New York with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for discussions during the UN General Assembly with China, Russia, Japan and South Korea on how to break the deadlock. He said those governments are "advocating the notion of being patient, working through the issue.''
Rice met yesterday with South Korea's Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan to discuss the current stalemate.
"We were in agreement that the participants need to speed up their efforts, so we can complete by the end of October the removal from the terrorism list, setting up a verification mechanism and finalizing the economic and energy aid to North Korea,'' Yu told reporters in New York.
Yu also met Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi there and discussed the issue, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Heejin Koo in Seoul at hjkoo@bloomberg.net; Allan Dodds Frank in New York at allanfrank@bloomberg.net