Global Changes Skew Calculus Of Food Aid For N. Korea

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 15, 2008; A01

SEOUL -- A grim rite of spring in Northeast Asia is the calculation of how many North Koreans could starve before the fall harvest -- and what the neighbors are willing to do about it.

This year, though, the famine bailout season is more urgent, more complicated and more politically explosive than at any time since the mid-1990s, when millions starved behind North Korea's closed borders.

Severe crop failure in the North, surging global prices for food and tougher behavior by donors, particularly South Korea and China, are putting unaccustomed pressure on Kim Jong Il's dysfunctional communist state.

"For Kim Jong Il, this will be his most difficult year," predicts Park Syung-je, a scholar at the Asia Strategy Institute in Seoul, referring to the North's dictator. "North Korea does not have much choice for food."

The threat of a calamitous 1990s-style famine has fallen substantially because of the emergence of grass-roots private markets across North Korea and a U.N. system for nutrition monitoring. Still, large numbers of people stand to suffer severe hardship, although probably not death, joining the ranks of the millions of North Koreans who go hungry even when harvests are good and food aid arrives.

Roughly a third of children and mothers are malnourished, according to a recent U.N. study. The average 8-year-old in the North is seven inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than a South Korean child of the same age.

This year is anything but good. Floods last August ruined part of the main yearly harvest, creating a 25 percent shortfall in the food supply and putting 6 million people in need, according to the U.N. World Food Program.

Over the winter, drought damaged the wheat and barley crop, according to a recent report in the official North Korean media. That crop normally tides people over during the summer "lean season" until the fall harvest.

North Korea's ability to buy food, meanwhile, has plunged, as the cost of rice and wheat on the global market has jumped to record highs, up 50 percent in the past six months.

Equally important for North Korea, its reliably generous neighbors seem to be operating under new, less tolerant rules for charity.

For nearly a decade, South Korea had led the world in providing assistance to the North, while setting almost no conditions on aid and asking few questions about who was getting it.

But South Korea's new president, Lee Myung-bak, wants to condition some of his country's gifts of food and fertilizer on progress in removing nuclear weapons from the North, on improvements in human rights and on guarantees that food will go to poor people, not to the North Korean military.

While South Korea will probably end up providing some aid without conditions, a long and politicized debate in Seoul about how much to give and under what conditions is delaying delivery.

"I will not rush but wait until the time is ripe," South Korea's new minister of unification, Kim Ha-joong, told reporters this week.

It seems unlikely that South Korean fertilizer -- a key to preventing crop failure in the coming fall harvest -- will arrive in time for planting, analysts here say.

"Crunch time for fertilizer is now, but negotiations haven't even begun to arrange for delivery," said Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea specialist at Kyungnam University in Seoul. "This means that North Korea's dependency on China has to grow."

But China, the North's closest ally and main trading partner, also seems to be stiffening its food policies.

It has quietly slashed food aid to North Korea, according to figures compiled by the World Food Program. Deliveries plummeted from 440,000 metric tons in 2005 to 207,000 tons in 2006. Last year there was a slight increase in aid, but it remained far below the levels of the past decade.

The reason for the cuts has not been made public, but some analysts believe it is related to North Korea's decision in 2006 to detonate a nuclear device. "China decided to punish the North Koreans," said Andrei Lankov, a professor who specializes in North Korean studies at Kookmin University in Seoul.

The nuclear explosion led the Bush administration to begin negotiating directly with Kim's government. But it also brought on a drastic reduction in the willingness of the United States and much of the rest of the world to give food to North Korea.

Total donations under a World Food Program project declined by more than 80 percent between 2005 and 2007, and U.S. donations fell to zero.

China also appears to have tightened its food squeeze on North Korea for domestic reasons. In order to meet local demand and control inflation, Beijing slapped a 22 percent tariff on grain exports to the North.

China is by far the country's major source of food imports, and the tariffs have resulted in higher prices and less grain in markets across North Korea, according to several aid groups.

Still, if hunger inside North Korea threatens to become widespread famine, China -- host for the Summer Olympics in August -- is certain to rush in large amounts of food, according to diplomats and aid experts.

"China will be elastic," said Lankov, a Russian who studied in the North and is a periodic visitor there. "They are unhappy with North Korea and they want to keep pressure on Kim, but they don't want collapse and they don't want to risk a refugee mess on their border during the Olympics."

In the 1990s, weather-related crop failures in North Korea combined with a reduction in aid from China and from states of the collapsed Soviet Union to cause widespread famine that killed an estimated 2 million people. Since then, though, the risk of famine has fallen substantially, according to food aid specialists and political analysts.

Behind its closed borders, the country has undergone a fundamental change. Analysts say North Korea now has two economies: the crumbling state system, which often fails to pay salaries and supply food, and a growing network of neighborhood markets, where people buy and sell, free of government controls. Kim's government grudgingly tolerates these places.

In the markets -- despite periodic police raids and crackdowns -- euros and dollars can buy Chinese gadgets and clothes. Local and imported food is also available for purchase or barter and would no doubt increase, arriving illegally if necessary, in response to a sudden spike in demand.

"You will never see mass starvation again," said Lee Seung-yong, secretary general of Good Friends, a Seoul-based charity with contacts across the North. "Except for some isolated areas, people have found ways to survive. They know they cannot depend on the government."

Institutionally, mechanisms are in place in North Korea to ring the international alarm bell before hunger turns into mass starvation. The World Food Program monitors nutrition in 50 counties, and the Kim government has become expert in asking for help.

But while famine is much less likely than in the 1990s, so is loyal public tolerance of food shortages, analysts and aid officials say.

These experts agree that cynicism and restiveness have increased because of the highly visible failings of Kim's government, the willingness of poorly paid police to take bribes and the now-proven ability of markets to deliver food and other goods that the state cannot provide.

"There is a small but growing potential of rebellion if the food supply dries up -- and Kim's government knows it," said Lankov, echoing several other analysts and aid experts.

All this could make the coming summer a test of Kim's ability to procure food and keep the lid on inside North Korea while maintaining good relations with his most important patron, China.

Unless foreign aid arrives, food shortages are expected to worsen just as Beijing begins to host the Olympics.

Special correspondent Stella Kim contributed to this report.

North Korea keeps up appearances

DISPATCH FROM PYONGYANG
A delegation traveling with the New York Philharmonic saw an impressive Pyongyang. But the lights went out afterward.
By Barbara Demick
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 10, 2008

PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA — With our noses pressed to the windows of the bus, we could see festive garlands of lights twinkling along the main road as though it were Christmas. The soaring monuments to the late North Korean founder Kim Il Sung were illuminated by floodlights, giving this city's skyline a warm glow.

We arrived at our hotel, where cellphones were available for rent from a counter in the lobby. Journalists were directed to a filing center with broadband Internet access.

Over the course of 48 hours touring with the New York Philharmonic, a delegation of 300 musicians, journalists and orchestra benefactors was whisked between our overheated hotel and theaters and banquet halls.

We were feted with multi-course dinners of salmon, crab gratin, lamb and pheasant. Our breakfast buffet was decorated with ice sculptures and included foods meant to cater to American palates.

OK, some of it was a little weird, like the banana and tomato sandwich. But the overall impression was that the North Koreans were trying hard to please and had the means to do so. Even if you were a cynical journalist, it was hard not to be impressed.

Wrong.

Within hours after our plane left, the lights went out. The cellphone kiosk closed down and the broadband was disconnected.

Pyongyang looked again like what it really is: the capital of the one of the world's most desperately poor and dysfunctional countries. As is often the case, the best show was the city itself, which had been displayed to create an illusion of prosperity.

"As soon as you guys left, it was pitch dark again," said Jean-Pierre de Margerie, country director of the United Nations World Food Program here and a resident of Pyongyang for the last 18 months.

The North Koreans "are very good at putting on a show," he said in a telephone interview from Pyongyang.

In fact, people working in North Korea say the situation is as grim as ever.

The Buddhist charity Good Friends reported last month that food is as scarce this year as in the mid-1990s, when famine killed an estimated 2 million people. The World Food Program says that last summer's flooding had destroyed more cropland than previously estimated and that only 10% to 20% of the population had enough to eat.

An agronomist working in North Korea said Pyongyang was eager to conceal the extent of its economic woes because it was hoping to attract foreign investment.

The philharmonic's trip Feb. 25 and 26 brought by far the largest delegation of Americans to visit Pyongyang since the Korean War more than 50 years ago. The capital of the aptly named Hermit Kingdom gets few visitors.

We stayed in a hotel called the Yanggakdo, a 47-story pile of 1970s modernism. Among frequent visitors to Pyongyang, the hotel is nicknamed Alcatraz; its location on an island on the Taedong River discourages visitors from wandering off.

To the extent that reporters saw Pyongyang, it was mostly through the windows of the bus. Facades of apartments had been recently painted in bright hues of lilac, apricot and wintergreen that imparted a hint of Austro-Hungarian romanticism on an architectural style more often described as Stalinist.

Along the main street, the storefronts displayed clothing and appliances, but it was unclear whether the merchandise was for sale. Reporters who asked to visit a regular store where North Koreans shopped were taken to a foreign-currency store charging about $140 for a pair of gloves and $290 for a bottle of champagne. A South Korean expert last week estimated North Koreans' average income at $1 per day. Needless to say, there were few shoppers.

It is almost impossible to distinguish the reality from the illusion in Pyongyang, which is as much a theatrical set as it is a city. It was rebuilt in the 1960s out of the wreckage of the Korean War as a showpiece to rival Seoul, the South Korean capital.

"Kim Il Sung needed an exemplary communist city for pure propaganda reasons to show that North Korea is a rich, prosperous nation, a perfect society under a wise leader," said Andrei Lankov, a Russian scholar of North Korea.

With so much money poured into the capital, it was indeed a marvel of modernism by the standards of the 1970s and 1980s, with its towering monuments, wide boulevards and plazas. But almost nothing has been built since.

Even today, residency in Pyongyang is reserved for citizens with top rating under a complicated system in which grades are assigned based on loyalty. Regular North Koreans aren't allowed to visit without a permit. And the disabled are banned from the city lest their appearance mar the perfection.

North Korean efforts to disguise their poverty are in fact counterproductive, Lankov said, because they undermine attempts to get sorely needed humanitarian aid.

"It is a question of national pride and acquired habit," he said. "They cannot really admit to themselves that they are a destitute Third World nation."

barbara.demick@latimes.com

North Korea Criticizes Military Exercise

By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Monday that annual American-South Korean military exercises that began over the weekend could further delay progress on ending the North’s nuclear weapons programs.

Although such criticism from the Communist country is routine, it dampened hopes for warmer ties between the United States and North Korea — hopes that had been raised after the New York Philharmonic’s concert last week in the North Korean capital., Pyongyang.

News also emerged from Pyongyang over the weekend that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, who did not attend the Philharmonic’s concert, paid a rare visit to the Chinese Embassy on Saturday for “cordial talks” — a move that suggested that Mr. Kim was striking a delicate diplomatic balance between the big powers.

The military exercise, which involves tens of thousands of United States and South Korean troops and the Nimitz, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was “an exercise for invasion to trigger a nuclear war,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying.

“This nuclear threat won’t work with us, but will only put the brakes on the denuclearization process on the Korean peninsula,” the unnamed spokesman was quoted as saying.

He said North Korea would “further bolster all its deterrent forces,” a term the country often uses to refer to its nuclear arsenal.

The United States and South Korea have been staging annual joint war games for years, and each year North Korea criticizes them.

This year’s weeklong drill, which started Sunday, comes at a delicate time for North Korea.

Frustration in Washington is rising over North Korea’s delays in giving a full accounting of its nuclear programs. In Seoul, Lee Myung-bak, a conservative politician who has championed a tougher stance toward the North, was sworn in as president on Feb. 25.

On Sunday, a North Korean military official was quoted by the official news media as saying that the country was ready to strike back against the military exercises, using “all our means we have prepared at a high cost.”

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, the top American negotiator on North Korea, flew to Beijing on Saturday and met with Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei of China to discuss how to restart the stalled nuclear disarmament talks with Pyongyang. But he was stood up by North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan.

Still, Mr. Hill held out hope for resuming the so-called six-party talks, which involve North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia. “Time is short so I hope we can get on with that this month,” Mr. Hill, who is on a 16-day trip to Asia, said Monday at a news conference in Hanoi, Reuters reported.

The disarmament talks are bogged down over Pyongyang’s failure to meet the agreed-upon deadline of Dec. 31 to make a complete declaration of its nuclear programs.

Analysts say the main sticking point is North Korea’s reluctance to state whether it tried to enrich uranium or to transfer nuclear technology to Syria.

North Korea nuclear talks shift focus to energy

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - Talks on ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions shifted focus on Saturday to U.S. energy aid for the impoverished state as delegates circulated a text of a proposed joint statement.

U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday authorized $25 million in aid for the North, which would provide up to 50,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil, as a reward for Pyongyang's commitment to disable its nuclear facilities by the end of the year.

U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said he had seen the draft text which Kyodo news agency reported include steps North Korea must take by the end of the year.

"It's a pretty complete draft and we made some comments, but I don't know what the others think about it," he told reporters. "So I don't know if we will have a joint statement or not."

North Korea, which tested a nuclear device last year, shut down and sealed its Yongbyon nuclear plant and allowed U.N. monitors back to the site in July.

Those were its first steps in carrying out a breakthrough agreement reached in February at the six-party talks, which group the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China.

But it must now disable its atomic facilities and make a declaration of all of its nuclear programs, in return for a huge injection of fuel aid and an end to diplomatic isolation.

China and South Korea have delivered initial fuel shipments and Russia is expected to do so too, but Japan has indicated it will not participate unless North Korea addresses the issue of Japanese citizens the North abducted in the 1970s and 1980s.

"The issue of abductions by the DPRK poses a serious challenge to human dignity," Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura told reporters at the United Nations on Friday.

ROAD MAP

Hill had initially said this round of talks would aim to set targets for disablement to the end of the year. He later scaled back expectations, saying negotiators hoped to agree to a "road map".

Hill stressed that disablement of the nuclear facilities, a step towards complete dismantling, had to mean that it would be a long and costly process for Pyongyang to restart its reactors.

"We have a common definition, which is the idea that if there were a return -- and of course we're not planning a return -- to plutonium production, that it should be made difficult by process of disablement," Hill said.

"Our definition of difficult is several months and we would argue it should be 12 months."

In 2002, North Korea was able to restart the Yongbyon reactor in two months, after a previous disarmament agreement fell apart.

South Korea said the issue of North Korea's nuclear ambitions should not be allowed to drag on.

"This problem, if not resolved soon, will seriously undermine the NPT regime," said South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, referring to the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

"It also has significant implications for peace and security in Northeast Asia and beyond," he told the U.N. General Assembly.

(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in New York)

Blacklisted Bank to Return to Original Owner

By DONALD GREENLEES

HONG KONG, Sept. 28 — A small family-owned bank in Macao accused by the United States of laundering money for North Korea will be returned to its original owner despite earlier warnings from the United States Treasury that to do so invited a return to illegal activity by the bank.

Stanley Au, a prominent Macao businessman and adviser to the Chinese government, is to resume control of Banco Delta Asia from a state-appointed administrative committee on Saturday, the Monetary Authority of Macao said Friday.

The monetary authority said the decision to allow Mr. Au to resume full control was taken in light of “remarkable improvement” in the bank’s operations and Mr. Au’s own “persistent requests.”

Mr. Au is an influential figure in Macao, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a former candidate to be Macao’s first chief executive.

Banco Delta Asia, among the top 10 largest banks in the gambling enclave, was blacklisted by the United States Treasury in March following allegations that it had committed financial crimes on behalf of North Korea, including laundering the proceeds of narcotics and weapons sales and passing counterfeit dollars.

The bank was prohibited from dealing with any American financial institution and effectively frozen out of the international banking system.

It has been under state supervision since September 2005, when the Treasury Department publicly revealed it was investigating the bank as a “primary money laundering concern.” At the time, the Macao government, under pressure from the United States, also froze $25 million in accounts in the bank held by North Korea-linked entities.

North Korea demanded that the accounts be released and refused to participate in nuclear disarmament talks until the United States agreed this year to support the return of the frozen funds to account holders.

Despite the release of the North Korean money, the Treasury Department pushed ahead with the ruling in March to exclude Banco Delta Asia from the American financial system.

In an explanation of the ruling, it said the “primary concern” was a pattern of activity by the former management and owners “to ignore, facilitate or even encourage illicit activity.” It also warned that there was a “likelihood of recidivism” if the bank was returned from state control to its previous owners.

But under local law, the Macao government was unable to further extend the mandate of the administrative committee in charge of Banco Delta Asia. It had the options of returning the bank to Mr. Au, liquidating it or selling it to new owners.

In a statement welcoming the Macao government’s move Friday, Mr. Au said the American decision to support the release of the frozen North Korean funds had proved that the bank was not involved in any financial crime.

“If the account holders in question were involved in illicit business transactions or money laundering as accused, then the money should have been confiscated,” he said.

The Macao government has made considerable efforts to clean up a reputation as a money laundering center to protect a gambling industry that is outstripping Las Vegas in terms of revenue. It has implemented new laws and imposed stiff penalties against money laundering and terrorist financing in the past year.

Under the supervision of the administrative committee, Banco Delta Asia also instituted new anti-money laundering procedures. But it remains unable to conduct operations using either American or Hong Kong dollars because of the Treasury sanctions.

U.S. and North Korea Reach Nuclear Deal

By DAVID E. SANGER

The top American negotiator with North Korea said yesterday that the country had agreed to disable its main nuclear fuel production plant by the end of the year and to account to international monitors for all of its nuclear programs, including what American intelligence agencies say they believe was a second, secret program purchased from Pakistan.

At the end of a two-day meeting in Geneva — exactly the kind of one-on-one session that the Bush administration had refused to hold in recent years — Christopher R. Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said the two sides had agreed on what would be a speedy next step, following action by North Korea this summer to turn off its main nuclear reactor.

“One thing that we agreed on is that the D.P.R.K. will provide a full declaration of all of their nuclear programs and will disable their nuclear programs by the end of this year, 2007,” Mr. Hill told reporters in Geneva, according to The Associated Press. He was using the initials for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s formal name.

But in a separate news conference, his counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, who heads the North Korean negotiating team, made no mention of an end-of-the-year deadline. He spoke instead of an accord to disable North Korea’s equipment and provide an accounting of its facilities, fuel and weapons in return for what he called “political and economic compensation.”

If the North Koreans meet the schedule and disable their equipment, it would be a major victory for the Bush administration, at a time when it is eager to claim progress on some diplomatic front to offset its problems in Iraq. Whether to offer the North rewards, including oil and, eventually, removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and diplomatic recognition, has been the subject of a six-year struggle within the Bush administration.

But most of the hawks who have opposed such offers are now gone, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has given Mr. Hill far more latitude to strike a deal, and to meet the North Koreans outside of “six party talks” — the discussions that have also included Russia, China, Japan and South Korea. Those talks are expected to resume in mid-September, and the weekend meeting was cast as a prelude to any agreement reached there.

The hawks are still unhappy, and have suggested that Mr. Hill is giving away too much.

“There is still simply no evidence that Pyongyang has made a decision to abandon its long-held strategic objective to have a credible nuclear-weapons capability,” John R. Bolton, the former American ambassador to the United Nations and, in President Bush’s first term, the top State Department official on counterproliferation, wrote in The Asian Wall Street Journal this weekend.

“This inconvenient fact should make it impossible for the State Department to concede on other issues, even if it were inclined to do so,” he said. “Creative minds are therefore working on ways to explain that any forthcoming North Korean declaration of its nuclear capabilities is ‘full and complete,’ thus eliminating the remaining troubling obstacles to full normalization of relations.”

When the Bush administration came into office, North Korea was still appearing to abide by a nuclear freeze that it had negotiated in 1994 with the Clinton administration. But that deal fell apart after the Bush administration accused the North of cheating on the agreement, purchasing uranium enrichment equipment from Abdul Qadeer Khan’s nuclear network, based in Pakistan.

While Mr. Khan and his associates have confirmed they made such sales, it is unclear what, if anything, the North did with the equipment. Mr. Hill said yesterday that that question would have to be answered as part of any full declaration. American intelligence agencies said earlier this year that they were uncertain what progress the North had made with that program, if any.

The North Koreans conducted a nuclear test last October, though it was not entirely successful. It is unclear how many other nuclear devices they have produced, though intelligence agencies have estimated that they may have the material for between eight and a dozen. The administration’s critics, including Mr. Bolton, have said it is almost impossible to imagine that the North would say how many weapons it had or where those weapons, or the fuel to manufacture new ones, were situated. So far, there is no agreement for an intrusive inspection system.

Still, if the facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear plant are truly “disabled,” a term no one has yet defined, it would probably prevent the North from manufacturing new weapons and expanding its arsenal. Mr. Kim said yesterday that “we made it clear, we showed clear willingness to declare and dismantle all nuclear facilities.”

Mr. Hill said that “we have to work out some of the details” on exactly what facilities would be disabled. “We will have a declaration in time to disable what needs to be disabled,” he said, adding that “for example, the Yongbyon reactor would have to be included.”

North Korea agrees to declare, disable nuclear programs by end of year

From the Associated Press

9:07 AM PDT, September 2, 2007

GENEVA — North Korea has agreed to declare and disable all its nuclear facilities by the end of this year, the chief U.S. negotiator said today.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said two days of talks between the United States and North Korea in Geneva had been "very good and very substantive" and would help improve chances of a successful meeting later this month with Japan, Russia, South Korea and China in six-nation talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear weapons program and improving relations between North Korea and other countries.

"One thing that we agreed on is that the DPRK will provide a full declaration of all of their nuclear programs and will disable their nuclear programs by the end of this year, 2007," Hill told reporters, using the initials for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Hill said the declaration will also include uranium enrichment programs, which the United States fears could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Kim Gye Gwan, the head of the North Korean delegation, did not comment immediately to reporters outside the North Korean mission.

Hill said earlier Sunday that improving U.S. relations with North Korea will depend on other progress in the talks, saying it "is a relationship that we will continue to try to build step by step with the understanding that we're not going to have a normalized relationship until we have a denuclearized North Korea."

"To the extent that we can move quickly to denuclearization, we can move quickly to normalization," he added.

Hill said both sides also discussed what needs to be done for North Korea to be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

He said they also had a good discussion of what North Korea wants to achieve and how it can improve relations with Japan.

He said he expected the next full session of the six-nation talks would be held in mid-September and that it would produce a "more detailed implementation plan for 'disablement"' of North Korea's nuclear facilities.

The meeting in Geneva was part of a flurry of "working group" sessions called for in February's six-nation accord in which North Korea agreed to disable its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor and declare and eventually dismantle all its nuclear activities.

In exchange, the economically struggling North will receive oil and other aid. The U.S., as part of the agreement, promised to begin the process of removing the country from the terrorism list and work toward full diplomatic relations.

North Korea has already received 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil from Seoul in return for the shutdown of its plutonium reactor in July. The energy-starved country will eventually get further energy or other aid equivalent to 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil in return for irreversibly disabling the reactor and ending all its nuclear programs, but has yet to set a date by when it will disable its nuclear facilities.

Another point of disagreement has been over allegations that North Korea has a second, undeclared nuclear weapons program using enriched uranium. North Korea said recently it was willing to discuss the issue, although it did not acknowledge having such a program.

Years of tension and deadlock over North Korea's nuclear program -- which peaked with the country's nuclear test last October -- have started to ease in recent months as the talks have made progress.

N. Korea Talks Fizzle With No Disarmament Timetable

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 21, 2007; A08

BEIJING, July 20 -- After three days of upbeat talks, negotiators from six nations announced Friday that they had failed to agree on a schedule for North Korea to take the next steps toward nuclear disarmament. They plan to meet again in September.

The United States and other countries pressed North Korea to accept a year-end deadline for fully disclosing all its nuclear activities and permanently disabling its main reactor, key moves toward the goal of the eventual complete dismantlement of its nuclear program.

But the North Koreans insisted on tighter coordination for what they would get in return for such steps, including 950,000 tons more fuel oil and progress toward better diplomatic relations, according to the chief U.S. negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill.

The outcome was another setback for the Chinese-sponsored negotiations -- including Japan, the United States, Russia and the two Koreas in addition to China -- that have been off and on for the past four years.

Diplomats had expressed hopes of keeping up the momentum generated by North Korea's closure Saturday of its main nuclear reactor in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil to power its electricity generators.

The shutdown and oil deliveries constituted the first on-the-ground compliance with an accord reached in Beijing on Feb. 13 laying out a choreographed series of North Korean nuclear disarmament steps to be matched by economic aid and friendlier diplomatic ties with Washington and its Asian allies.

North Korea's statements have indicated that it expects improved relations to include an end to economic sanctions, removal from the U.S. list of governments supporting terrorism and less hostility from Japan. Linking these goals to the disarmament steps was the issue that diplomats proved unable to resolve in Beijing this week -- and that they may find haunting them in the days ahead.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry warned Friday, for instance, that the six-party talks could go into another stall if Japan continued to link aid to the dispute over Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean intelligence agents. Japan has refused to contribute economic aid to North Korea until it gets more information about what happened to Japanese citizens whom North Korean agents took to the communist state in the 1970s and '80s.

As the talks broke up, the diplomats decided to hand off discussions to lower-level working groups, assigned to coordinate the next steps with corresponding moves by the United States, Japan and others. A communique from China said the chief negotiators and their teams would return in September to try again for a firm schedule, based on information to be generated by the working groups.

The abductees will be the subject of one of the working groups, the Chinese communique said. Another group will focus on normalization of relations between the United States and North Korea, raising the issue of how swiftly the Bush administration can deliver the politically sensitive diplomatic changes demanded by North Korea.

In addition, Hill noted, some of the sequencing between aid deliveries and North Korean steps to dismantle the nuclear program demands technical expertise beyond the reach of nonspecialists. North Korea's port facilities allow it to absorb only about 50,000 tons of oil at once, for instance, suggesting that other forms of economic aid may have to be substituted to keep the corresponding steps by North Korea up to speed.

Departing Beijing on his way home, Hill portrayed the delay as a minor hiccup rather than the harbinger of another prolonged stall by North Korea. "I'm still of the view that with a little luck we can wrap this all up by the end of the year, but it's obviously going to be difficult," he told reporters.

N. Korea nuclear talks shun deadlines for disarmament

From Reuters

July 20, 2007

BEIJING — Talks to end North Korea's nuclear arms program veered away Thursday from setting a deadline for the next phase of disarmament but settled on a set of tasks the United States said could be carried out this year.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said this week that North Korea had closed five main nuclear facilities, completing the first stage of a disarmament deal reached in February.

The six-nation talks in Beijing were seeking consensus on the second stage of disarmament: permanently disabling the Yongbyon nuclear complex and receiving a full declaration of Pyongyang's atomic arms activities in return for heavy fuel oil.

Chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill said the envoys broadly agreed on how that next phase will unfold but did not agree on a deadline. At the start of the latest talks Wednesday, he had proposed completing the steps by year's end.

Closure of the Yongbyon nuclear complex was delayed for many weeks by a financial snarl that held up North Korea's receipt of more than $20 million in frozen bank funds.

Hill said negotiators wanted to avoid more broken deadlines.

North Korea Proposes Military Talks With U.S.

By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, July 13 -- North Korea revived its old demand for direct military talks with the United States on Friday, as international efforts to restart multinational talks on ending its nuclear weapons programs gained momentum.

In a statement carried by its official news media, the North’s Korea People’s Army proposed military talks at "any place and at any time" and "for the purpose of discussing the issues related to ensuring the peace and security on the Korean Peninsula."

The statement didn’t provide further details. But for decades, North Korea has been trying to engage the United States in direct military dialogue aimed at winning one of its regime’s key policy goals: a permanent peace treaty with the United States to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

With its economy in a shambles and its 1.2 million-member military sucking away a lion’s share of the impoverished nation’s s meager national resources, the regime believes that a peace treaty will ensure its survival and enable it to focus more on rebuilding the economy, experts say.

There was no immediate U.S. response to the North Korean proposal on Friday.

But Washington had previously rejected such a proposal, objecting any talks that would exclude its ally South Korea and China.

China fought on the North Korean side during the war, while the United States led U.N. forces on the South Korean side. The United States and China are both signatories to the 1953 armistice, along with North Korea. South Korea did not sign.

North Korea is set to resume six-party talks on Wednesday with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia on how to end its nuclear weapons programs. On Friday, a team of U.N. nuclear inspectors arrived in Beijing on their way to North Korea the next day to monitor and verify the shutdown of North Korea’s main nuclear complex.

Pyongyang’s latest demand for direct military talks with Washington has been expected because the six nations had previously agreed to consider peace talks on the Korean Peninsula if North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons programs.

U.S. and South Korean officials envisioned four-way peace talks involving all major participants of the Korean War: the United States, China and the two Koreas. But North Korea prefers direct talks with the United States in a ploy experts say is aimed at driving a wedge between Washington and Seoul.

Military dialogue looms large in North Korea’s strategy and is destined to complicate an ultimate resolution of the nuclear crisis. The North demands that the United States withdraw all U.S. troops from South Korea before giving up its nuclear weapons and signing a peace treaty.

The Korean cease-fire has never been replaced by a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula technically in a state of war. The United States keeps 30,000 troops in the South to support the South’s 670,000 strong military to guard against North Korea.

To force Washington into peace talks, North Korea has repeatedly called the armistice a "piece of useless paper." It also repeatedly warned that without a peace treaty, the Korean Peninsula remains at the "brink of nuclear war."

On Friday, it said it "will have no option but to exert utmost efforts for further rounding off the means for retaliatory strike strong enough to cope with the U.S. nuclear attack and pre-emptive strike in order to protect its dignity, sovereignty and right to existence."

North Korea 'on track' to scrap nuke weapons

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has expressed cautious optimism that North Korea would stick to a deal to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
"I do believe that the North Koreans will shut down the reactor. They say that they have made a strategic choice to get rid of their nuclear weapons programs,'' she said.

Nine months after the hardline communist state shocked the world with its first atomic test, hopes are rising for the imminent closure of North Korea's Yongbyon reactor, which produces bomb-making raw material.

Ms Rice said "at some point in time, that there's got to be an accounting for whatever was made out of the activity at Yongbyon.''

"I think we're going to know a lot about that in this next phase where they will have to declare what they've done, where they will have to disable the programs and the facilities in a more irreversible way than simply a shutdown.

"But I think we are seeing good signs that they're going to invite the IAEA inspectors in,'' the secretary of state said.

Ten inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were expected in North Korea Saturday after a stopoff in Beijing, the UN agency said.

North Korea has said it will consider shutting the Soviet-era Yongbyon facility as soon as it receives the first shipment of oil promised in a breakthrough deal with the United States and five other powers in February.

The two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan have been negotiating since 2003.

They will meet again in Beijing on July 18 and 19, the Chinese foreign ministry said.

"They're going to shut down Yongbyon and then there will be considerable pressure, I think from the six parties,'' Ms Rice said.

"It's a very good thing that we're in this with the other big regional players - China, Japan, Russia, South Korea.''

South Korea Sends Oil Aid to North Korea

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 6:39 a.m. ET

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A shipment of oil headed Thursday to North Korea in exchange for the expected shutdown soon of the communist nation's only working nuclear reactor, which would be the first step by Pyongyang to stop making atomic bombs in nearly five years.

The chief U.N. inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said he expects the agency's monitoring of the shutdown of the North's Yongbyon reactor will start ''early next week'' and the initial inspection is expected to be completed ''within a maybe month or so.''

''I expect that operation to move smoothly,'' ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in Seoul of the visit by inspectors to North Korea expected to begin Saturday. ''I am quite optimistic that this is a good step in the right direction.''

A South Korean ship -- the 6,750-ton No. 9 Han Chang -- departed for North Korea from the port of Ulsan on South Korea's southeast coast, carrying an initial batch of 6,200 tons of heavy fuel oil being given to the North for its agreement to shut down Yongbyon.

The ship was expected to arrive Saturday in the North's northeastern port of Sonbong and will take some 48 hours to unload.

North Korea, after refusing to go forward with the accord for months due to a banking dispute with the U.S. government, strongly hinted last week that it would undertake the long-delayed shutdown as soon as it receives an initial shipment of oil aid.

The shipment is part of 50,000 tons promised for the reactor shutdown, and the North would get an additional 950,000 tons of energy aid if it disables all its nuclear facilities under a February deal with the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

If the North shuts down Yongbyon, it would be the first move it has made to scale back its atomic weapons development since the nuclear standoff began in late 2002. In the first months of the crisis, Pyongyang kicked out U.N. monitors and restarted Yongbyon.

Tensions in the standoff climaxed with the North's first-ever nuclear test in October last year.

ElBaradei said that beyond these initial moves, the North's eventual entire abandonment of its nuclear facilities would be a ''long process'' that would depend on progress at the six-nation disarmament talks.

''We should not delude ourselves,'' said ElBaradei, who was attending an international atomic technology conference in Seoul. ''It will take time to have a comprehensive solution.''

On Wednesday, he had said it was unclear when the North would actually switch off the reactor.

China's Foreign Ministry said Thursday that international talks on dismantling North Korea's nuclear bomb program will resume next week. Spokesman Qin Gang announced at a regular news conference that the talks would be held July 18-19 in Beijing. The negotiations were last held in March.

North Korea had refused to honor the shutdown pledge because of a banking dispute with the U.S. surrounding North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank blacklisted by Washington over accusations of money laundering and counterfeiting. The financial dispute was resolved recently as the U.S. helped release the funds.

------

Associated Press reporters Ahn Young-joon in Ulsan, South Korea, and Bo-mi Lim in Seoul contributed to this report.

RUSSIAN MINISTER SAYS HE HAS 'NO DOUBTS' ABOUT NORTH KOREA

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow on July 10 that he "wouldn't make any complaints" about North Korea's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Interfax reported. He called on the other participants in the six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program "to strictly abide by our joint plan of seeking a settlement and not to bring into it issues relating to the bilateral relations of any of the states with Pyongyang." Radio Japan, which is the international service of Japanese national broadcaster NHK, said on July 11 that Lavrov was alluding to Japan's policy of pressing North Korea to provide full information on the fate of at least 13 Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s to train North Korean agents in the Japanese language and customs. Pyongyang has provided some information, but Tokyo considers its response inadequate. Lavrov stressed on July 10 that he has "heard no complaints that Pyongyang is failing to meet its commitments" to the IAEA. He added, "I don't think that at this moment we should have any suspicions, or any complacency for that matter." He described as "interesting" a recent EU proposal to deploy an international peacekeeping force in the Palestinian territories. Lavrov said that "we will study the [EU's] ideas with interest, but...we want to know in more specific terms [if the proposal is more than] a slogan and how it is meant to be put into practice and what it implies." PM

Six-nation nuclear talks will resume

International disarmament talks on North Korea's nuclear program will resume in Beijing next week, a report said, as the U.N. nuclear watchdog prepared to oversee Pyongyang's promised shutdown of its reactor.

China has informed participating countries that the negotiations will start July 18, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. Talks involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States were last held in March.

Today, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said United Nations nuclear inspectors would return Saturday to North Korea to monitor the shutdown.

Born and raised in a North Korean gulag

Born and raised in a North Korean gulag
By Choe Sang-Hun
Monday, July 9, 2007

SEOUL: On Nov. 29, 1996, 14-year-old Shin Dong Hyok and his father were made to sit in the front row of a crowd assembled to watch executions. The two had already spent seven months in a North Korean prison camp's torture compound, and Shin assumed they were among those to be put to death.

Instead, the guards brought out his mother and his 22-year-old brother. The mother was hanged, the brother was shot by a firing squad.

"Before she was executed, my mother looked at me," Shin said in a recent interview. "I don't know if she wanted to say something, because she was bound and gagged. But I avoided her eyes.

"My father was weeping, but I didn't cry," he said. "I had no love for her. Even today I hate her for what I had to go through because of her."

Shin's story provides a rare glimpse into one of the least-known prison camps in North Korea.

Shin, now 24, was a political prisoner by birth. From the day he was born in 1982 in Camp No. 14 in Kaechon until he escaped in 2005, Shin had known no other life. Guards beat children, tortured grandparents and, in cases like Shin's, executed family members. But Shin said it did not occur to him to hate the authorities. He assumed everyone lived this way.

He had never heard of Pyongyang, the capital city 90 kilometers, or 55 miles, to the south, or even of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.

"I didn't know about America, or China or the fact that the Korean Peninsula was divided and there was a place called South Korea," he said. "I thought it was natural that I was in the camp because of my ancestors' crime, though I never even wondered what that crime was. I never thought it was unfair."

Since 1992, about a dozen former North Korean prison camp inmates have fled to South Korea. But most were held in the "revolutionizing zone" at Camp No. 15 in Yodok in eastern North Korea. This means that the emphasis was on "re-educating" the prisoners. If they survived long enough to complete their sentences, they were released.

Shin is the first North Korean who came south who is known to have escaped from a prison camp. Moreover, he was confined to a "total-control zone."

According to a report released in June by the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul: "Prisoners sent to a total-control zone can never come out. They are put to work in mines or logging camps until they die. Thus the authorities don't even bother to give them ideological education. They only teach them skills necessary for mining and farming."

Thanks to the stories of former Yodok inmates, the camp's name has become synonymous with human rights abuses. But there are at least four other prison camps in North Korea, including Camp No. 14 in Kaechon. These others are far less known because so few have emerged to describe them.

Shin "is a living example of the most brutal form of human rights abuse," said Yoon Yeo Sang, president of Database Center for North Korean Human Rights in Seoul, where Shin is taking temporary shelter. "He comes from a place where people are deprived of their ability to have the most basic human feelings, such as love, hatred and even a sense of being sad or mistreated."

A North Korean named Kim Yong who came south in 1999 and now lives in the United States said he spent two years in Kaechon, but some refugees have questioned his claim.

Ahn Myeong Cheol, who worked as a driver and guard at four camps before reaching South Korea in 1994, has no doubts that Shin was in a total-control zone. Ahn said that when he met Shin in June, he immediately noticed the telltale signs: the avoidance of eye contact and arms warped by heavy labor from childhood.

"An instruction drilled into every guard's head is: Don't treat them like humans," Ahn said.

According to Shin, the prison authorities matched his father, Shin Kyong Sup, with his mother, Chang Hye Kyong, and made them spend five days together before separating them. This sort of arrangement was known as "award marriage," a privilege given only to outstanding inmates. An exemplary worker might be allowed to visit the woman chosen as his wife a few times a year.

Shin's brother was born in 1974 and Shin in 1982. Young children lived with their mothers, who worked from 5 a.m. to midnight. Once they turned 11, children were moved to communal barracks but were allowed to visit their mothers if they excelled at their work.

"I got to visit my mother only once or twice a year," Shin said. "I never saw my whole family together. I don't think I saw my brother more than a few times."

There were up to 1,000 children but no textbooks in the school at Valley No. 2, the part of the camp where Shin lived. Pupils were taught to read and write, and to add and subtract, but little more. After school, children worked in the fields or mines. In most of North Korea, villages are decorated with Communist slogans and portraits of Kim Jong Il. Valley No. 2 had only one slogan carved into a wooden plaque: "Everyone obey the regulations!"

Inmates were fed the same meal three times a day: a bowl of steamed corn and a salty vegetable broth. They scavenged whatever else they could find: cucumbers and potatoes from the fields, frogs, mice, dragonflies and locusts. Shin said he once ate corn kernels he found in cow droppings. When a teacher found a girl had hidden wheat grains in her pocket, he beat her on the head with a stick. She died the next day.

Shin's life changed in 1996, when his mother and brother were accused of trying to escape. Guards interrogated him in an underground torture cell about a suspected family plot to flee the camp. They stripped and hung him by his arms and legs from the ceiling, and held him over hot charcoal.

During the interrogations he learned for the first time that his father's family belonged to a "hostile class" - a category that entailed punishment over three generations - because his uncles had collaborated with the South Korean Army during the Korean War.

Shin owed his unusual escape to two friends: an older cellmate who helped him recover from his torture wounds, and a man he met in the garment factory where he worked in 2004 who told him about life beyond the camp.

"Everything he told me about the outside world - the food, China - was fascinating," Shin said. "I loved his stories. Once I heard about the outside, I thought I would go crazy. I wanted to get out. I couldn't focus on work. Every day was an agony."

On Jan. 2, 2005, when Shin and his co-worker were collecting firewood near the camp's electrified fence and could not see any guards, they ran.

Shin is still struggling to understand what happened next: his friend fell against the high-voltage fence, his body creating an opening.

"I climbed over him, through the hole," Shin said. "I ran down the hill like a madman. I looked back and he wasn't moving."

In July 2005, Shin reached China. In February 2006, a South Korean helped him seek asylum at the South Korean Consulate in Shanghai. He arrived in Seoul last August.

Today, Shin bears burn scars from the torture and the electrified fence, and walks with a slight limp. He says he has recurring nightmares about being back in Camp No. 14. Awake, he wonders what happened to his father and about the man he left behind at the fence. Did he sacrifice himself to help Shin escape?

Now in Seoul, he said he sometimes finds life "more burdensome than the hardest labor in the prison camp, where I only had to do what I was told." His limited vocabulary has caused him to fail twice the written driver's license test. And there is his struggle to reconcile with his dead mother.

"However I try, I can't forgive her," he said. "She and my brother severely hurt me and my father by trying to escape. Didn't she think what would happen to us?"

Shin said he sometimes wished he could return to the time before he learned about the greater world, "without knowing that we were in a prison camp, without knowing that there was a place called South Korea."

U.N. Mission to North Korea Approved

By CHRISTINE HAUSER

The United Nations nuclear monitoring agency agreed today to send experts to North Korea as part of a process that is intended to lead to the eventual closure of the country’s nuclear facility.

The decision was made by the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who met in a special session to discuss a report by the agency’s director general on the monitoring and verification process in North Korea.

An I.A.E.A. team visited North Korea at the end of June to work out ground rules for verifying the closure and sealing of North Korea’s main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, the country’s capital. North Korea promised to shut down the reactor as part of an agreement with four neighboring nations and the United States, reached at six-way talks in China in February.

Under the pact, North Korea agreed to freeze its plutonium production at the five-megawatt nuclear facility, and then to allow inspectors to monitor and verify its compliance. In return, the United States, China, South Korea and Russia agreed to provide North Korea with food and fuel aid. Japan is the sixth party to the pact.

When a deputy director of the U.N. agency, Ollie Heinonen, visited the facilities at Yongbyon last month, “we agreed on the modalities that need to be taken to shut down these facilities, the four facilities there, with a view to eventual abandonment,” said the atomic agency’s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, who spoke to reporters in Vienna after the board’s decision.

“This is the beginning of a process,” Dr. ElBaradei said, according to a transcript of his remarks compiled by the agency. Referring to North Korea by the initials of its formal name, he said, “It’s going to be a long and complex process, but I welcome the return of the D.P.R.K. to the verification process.”

It was not immediately clear when the agency’s team would travel to Yongbyon; the precise scheduling cannot be done until the North Korean authorities issue an invitation for the inspectors. Still, Dr. ElBaradei said that the team should be able to go in the next week or two.

He said that it would not take long to shut the reactor facilities down, “probably a few days.” Then, the agency would have to install cameras and ther equipment to monitor the facility and make sure it remains idle. According to American intelligence estimates, the Yongbyon nuclear plant has already produced enough plutonium for as many as a half-dozen bombs.

To ensure that North Korea keeps its promise to close the plant, the United States made several concessions. Last month, North Korea said that its dispute with the United States over $25 million frozen in a bank in Macao, Banco Delta Asia, had been resolved, and that it would begin to carry out its much-delayed promise to shut down the plant.

Dr. ElBaradei said he told the agency’s board today that it needed to take a fresh look at how the agency is financed, saying that the current budget was “far from being adequate to meet our increasing responsibilities in the area of verification, safety, security, development.”

The I.A.E.A. is also involved in work on Iran’s disputed uranium-enrichment program, which many in the West believe is meant to yield material for nuclear weapons, though the Iranian government insists it is entirely peaceful. Dr. ElBaradei said today that the agency’s inspectors, during a visit to Iran last week, observed a “slowing” in some aspects of the program.

“We have seen fairly slow development in commissioning new cascades or feeding of material,” he said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Meets with N. Korea's Kim Jong Il

By Daniel Schearf
Beijing
03 July 2007

China's foreign minister Yang Jiechi has met with North Korea's secretive leader Kim Jong Il during a visit to Pyongyang to try to revive stalled nuclear negotiations. And in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report saying North Korean officials have agreed to cooperate with U.N. nuclear inspectors. Daniel Schearf reports from Beijing.

China's official Xinhua news agency confirmed that Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi met Tuesday afternoon with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters in Beijing the two sides would discuss reviving six-nation negotiations on North Korea's nuclear programs.

He said China was willing to work with North Korea to implement a joint February agreement with the United States, Japan, South Korea and Russia calling for North Korea to verifiably shut down its main nuclear facilities in exchange for energy aid, security guarantees, and diplomatic incentives.

"I believe Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi will express to the North Korean side the Chinese side's consistent position to peacefully resolve the Korean peninsula nuclear issue through negotiations and dialogue to realize peace and stability on the Korean peninsula as well as long-term security and stability in northeast Asia," he said.

Qin said Yang had earlier Tuesday met with North Korea's Foreign Minister and Premier to discuss bilateral relations, implementing the February agreement and promoting six-party talks.

The six-nation talks had been stalled for months because of a dispute over how to transfer North Korean accounts from a Macau bank that had previously been frozen under U.S. pressure. North Korea also missed an April deadline to shut down its main Yongbyon nuclear reactor.

However, a report released by the International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday says North Korean officials have agreed to cooperate with U.N. nuclear inspectors on the containment and surveillance of the nuclear reactor.

The report is based on a visit by IAEA inspectors to North Korea last week.

It says North Korea agrees to give the agency a list of nuclear facilities that are shut down, give agency personnel access to all facilities that have been shut down or sealed, and allow appropriate containment and surveillance.

South Korea has said it will begin delivering the first part of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil aid to the North in the next two weeks.

The chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill, who made a surprise visit to North Korea last week, has suggested talks may resume the week of July 10.

Qin said Tuesday all sides were still consulting on a date for the resumption of nuclear talks.

North Korea Said to Cooperate With IAEA

By GEORGE JAHN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 3, 2007; 12:23 PM

VIENNA, Austria -- North Korea is prepared to cooperate with the U.N. agency overseeing the shutdown of the country's nuclear program, according to a report made available Tuesday to The Associated Press.

The confidential four-page report said North Korea has agreed to provide International Atomic Energy Agency experts with needed technical information, access and other help needed to shut down North Korea's plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear facility.

The report will be discussed by the agency's 35-nation board and is expected to be approved as early as Monday, paving the way for the beginning of the IAEA mission overseeing the shutdown and eventual dismantling of the Yongbyon facility.

That would effectively start the process of ending the North's nuclear program, which _ if carried through _ would eliminate it as a nuclear weapons threat.

Chinese state media reported Tuesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il said the countries involved in the February deal committing his government to dismantling its nuclear program should follow through on their initial pledges of aid.

"Recently there have been signs that the situation on the Korean peninsula is easing," Kim was paraphrased as saying to Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in a ministry statement.

Kim said "all the parties should implement the initial actions" of the disarmament agreement reached in February, a statement posted to the ministry's Web site said. The initial steps include the shutdown of the North's main reactor in exchange for economic aid and political concessions.

It is the first time the North's reclusive leader has spoken publicly about the February disarmament deal.

Yang met with Kim in Pyongyang on Tuesday and conveyed a "personal message" from Chinese President Hu Jintao, the North's state media reported. Their meeting was held "in a cordial atmosphere," the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

Yang told Kim that China wants the pact to be "comprehensively implemented" and hopes relevant parties will "earnestly fulfill their commitments" to help push the international nuclear talks forward, the Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. does not oppose the release of "some small portion" of fuel aid to North Korea. He stressed, however, that the North must fulfill its obligations under the February accord and shut down its nuclear reactor in the next few weeks.

He said North Korea had not asked for anything beyond the terms of the nuclear agreement. "Good faith is going to be met in turn by good faith," he said.

According to the report made available to the AP in Vienna, North Korea has agreed to several things to help the IAEA, including giving the experts access to all facilities that have been sealed and allowing them to install surveillance devices to verify that they remain closed.

The agreements in the report "reflect wide-ranging willingness" by North Korea to fulfill its commitment to shut down Yongbyon, said a diplomat accredited to the IAEA and familiar with its involvement in the North Korean nuclear file.

The report was based on the work of IAEA deputy director general Olli Heinonen and was compiled after his tour last week of the Yongbyon facility.

North Korea pledged in February to shut down and disable the 5-megawatt reactor, capable of producing enough plutonium to produce one nuclear bomb a year, in exchange for economic aid and political concessions. That landmark agreement was the result of talks between North Korea and the United States, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan.

But the country refused for months to act on the promise until it received about $25 million in funds that were frozen in a Macau bank amid a dispute with the U.S. over alleged money-laundering.

The U.N. visit was the nuclear watchdog's first trip to the Yongbyon reactor since inspectors were expelled from the country in late 2002. IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei had traveled to North Korea in March but had not visited the facility.

N. Korea puts new demand, may delay nuclear shutdown

Mon Jul 2, 2007 5:34PM EDT

By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea has said it wants to get promised shipments of oil before shutting down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, delaying again a key obligation under a February nuclear agreement, U.S. officials said on Monday.

Administration critics of the agreement said the demand was further evidence of North Korean bad faith, but two other senior officials said they believe the agreement was on track and any delay in shuttering Yongbyon would not be prolonged.

Chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill said last week he wanted Pyongyang to shut down Yongbyon, which produces plutonium for the North's main nuclear weapons program, before holding a new round of six-country talks, expected next week.

But U.S. officials told Reuters Pyongyang had informed South Korea, which is providing the heavy fuel oil, and the International Atomic Energy Agency that it wanted at least some of the heavy fuel oil before the reactor is shut down.

"I think there's a sense that the North Koreans do want to start receiving elements of the 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil as they move toward shutting down Yongbyon," said one U.S. official, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity.

After the February 13 announcement, a different senior official who briefed reporters said that there would be no shipment of the heavy fuel oil "until we're satisfied that the shutdown, the sealing, is occurring..."

U.S. officials say Yongbyon is continuing to operate and there are no signs of preparations for a shutdown.

"SLOW ROLLING"

A member of the administration who opposes the deal accused Pyongyang of "slow rolling us again."

But a supporter urged patience, saying the North Koreans just wanted assurances the fuel oil shipments would happen. "We are down to a couple of weeks" when the nuclear reactor will be shuttered, he said.

South Korea will begin shipping fuel oil in two weeks and try to complete the supply in 20 days, its unification ministry said on Saturday, after two days of talks with the North on the details of the energy aid.

Under the February 13 deal North Korea is to receive another 950,000 tons of fuel oil or other aid of equivalent value when it completes steps to disable all its nuclear facilities.

North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China struck a deal on February 13 under which Pyongyang would receive aid and security steps in return for moving to scrap its nuclear arms programs.

The deal was stalled for weeks by a dispute over some $25 million in North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank under pressure from Washington. Following the release of the funds, North Korea agreed to implement the deal.

The IAEA, the guardian of international nuclear safeguards, will monitor and verify the disarmament steps.

After visiting Pyongyang last week, IAEA official Olli Heinonen said the negotiations had achieved an understanding on how to monitor the sealing and shutdown of Yongbyon.

But he said the timing of the long-negotiated shutdown still needed to be worked out between North Korea and its negotiating partners.

On June 21, Hill made a surprise trip to Pyongyang and predicted North Korea could shutter Yongbyon within three weeks, but that target now seems to have slipped.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Monday rejected a six-party meeting to set a date for sealing Yongbyon but said six-party talks to discuss next steps in the Feb 13 agreement would convene "around the time" the shutdown begins.

He said the administration did not have a specific date in mind, only that the shutdown should be "as soon as possible."

Who Pays?

According to the recently-released "breakthrough" agreement with North Korea coming out of the six-party talks and secret one-on-one talks with the United States in Berlin, the five other parties will arrange for energy assistance to North Korea, with 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil to come within 60 days. This is part of an exchange for nuclear suspension or denuclearization, depending on who you talk to.

One very good question is, who will pay for and provide these 50,000 tons of oil?

It isn't Japan, who says it will not provide energy aid to North Korea until North Korea resolves the issue of 13 or more Japanese abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. This issue will certainly not be completed soon enough for the Japanese to provide this aid within 60 days.

By March 19, the working group of the six parties on the energy assistance provisions of the agreement are supposed to resolve how the emergency energy aid will be provided. We'll know then if the United States, China, Russia, or South Korea will pay -- it certainly won't be Japan.