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.

On Two Fronts, One Nuclear, Iran Is Defiant

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN, Iran, Sept. 2 — Iran’s leaders issued dual, defiant statements on Sunday, with the president announcing that the nation had 3,000 active centrifuges to enrich uranium and the top ayatollah appointing a new Islamic Revolutionary Guards commander who once advocated military force against students.

The pairing of the messages, just days after the United Nations’ top nuclear official said Iran was striking conciliatory poses, appeared intended to reaffirm the country’s refusal to back down to pressure from the United States over its nuclear program and its role in Iraq, political analysts in Iran said. And it came as the Bush administration was celebrating progress in its talks with North Korea to shut down that country’s nuclear programs.

Indeed, the timing and tone of Iran’s declarations may be more politically significant than their content, particularly in the case of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s announcement that Iran had finally reached its stated goal of developing 3,000 centrifuges.

Many technical experts have expressed skepticism over Iran’s periodic claims of enrichment breakthroughs, saying the assertions often turn out to be exaggerated.

That seemed to be the case again on Sunday, though nuclear experts said that even if Mr. Ahmadinejad was overreaching, it would be only a matter of time before the boast became true. The most recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency, released Thursday, said Iran had 1,968 centrifuges enriching uranium at its main Natanz plant, 328 in testing, and 328 in assembly — for a total of 2,624. The report noted that the assessment was accurate as of Aug. 19, or two weeks ago.

The goal of 3,000 centrifuges is significant to nuclear experts: they say that if Iran could spin that many centrifuges nonstop for a year, it could make enough highly enriched uranium for a single atom bomb.

But Mohamed ElBaradei, the atomic energy agency director general, said in an interview last week that Iran seemed to be intentionally slowing its progress in an effort to strike a conciliatory note as the United Nations Security Council demanded it stop the nuclear work completely. “My gut feeling,” he said, “is that it’s primarily for political reasons.”

Still, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s new claim was a direct challenge to that notion, and to efforts by the United States and European countries to impose harsher sanctions against Iran. “The West thought the Iranian nation would give in after just a resolution, but now we have taken another step in the nuclear progress and launched more than 3,000 centrifuge machines, installing a new cascade every week,” state television quoted the president as saying.

The White House warned that a new round of sanctions was likely in the wake of Iran’s refusal to cooperate. “This kind of announcement is inconsistent with Iran’s recent comments on cooperation with the I.A.E.A.,” said a spokesman, Robert W. Saliterman.

The coinciding message about the change at the top of the Revolutionary Guards, made by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had distinct ramifications for the United States as well.

There have been reports that the Bush administration is considering declaring the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization, opening the way to further economic sanctions against Iran because the Guards are involved in nearly every aspect of the state-controlled economy. (Last week, a senior administration official involved in the internal debate said the designation may instead be limited to the Quds Force, which the United States accuses of being particularly active in Iraq.)

The Revolutionary Guards are also believed to be deeply involved in the country’s nuclear program, and any action against it or the Quds Force is perceived in Washington as a way of stepping up pressure on Iran’s nuclear aspirations as well.

Iran still rejects Western accusations that it is seeking nuclear weapons, insisting that its program is solely for peaceful purposes. And it has reached agreement with the atomic energy agency finally to answer questions about many years of past nuclear activities that have fueled suspicions that it has been secretly trying to develop a weapons program.

But that agreement was dismissed by the United States as a half step that ignored Washington and Europe’s primary demand: that Iran stop enrichment.

Iran’s statements, in addition to ratcheting up defiance of international pressure, had distinct domestic political overtones as well, analysts said. “He has to feed his domestic clientele,” one European diplomat who works with the atomic agency said Sunday.

In Tehran, Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst and former government official, said, “What is important is the spirit that dominates the system, and that has not changed.”

The news of the change at the top of the Revolutionary Guards, in particular, was greeted with surprise and keen interest by Iranians.

Ayatollah Khamenei announced that Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, who had led the force for a decade, would be replaced by Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari.

The Guards, which has about 200,000 members, controls a huge empire that has a stake in every significant corner of Iran’s economy and its civil system of governance. Mr. Ahmadinejad was a member of the Guards during the 1980 to 1988 war with Iraq, and he has placed dozens of former members in leadership positions around the country and in the central government in Tehran.

The Guards are, by design, the most economic and politically independent body in the country, outside of the supreme leader’s office. General Jafari has an established record of support for the theocratic system of government, and its hard-line policies.

In 1999, he showed a willingness to use the guard’s military force to quell student riots. In a letter to Mohammad Khatami, then the president, he wrote, “We have reached the end of our rope and can no longer tolerate it if the situation is not confronted.”

David E. Sanger and William J. Broad contributed reporting.

Iran: Uranium Centrifuge Goal Reached

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 9:11 a.m. ET

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's president claimed Sunday that his country is now running 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for its controversial nuclear program -- a long-sought Iranian goal.

The claim contradicted a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Thursday that put the number much lower -- at close to 2,000. The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency said enrichment had slowed and Iran was cooperating with its nuclear probe, which could fend off calls for a third round of sanctions.

''The West thought the Iranian nation would give in after just a resolution, but now we have taken another step in the nuclear progress and launched more than 3,000 centrifuge machines, installing a new cascade every week,'' Ahmadinejad told a group of students in remarks carried by the state television Web site.

Iran previously announced operating 3,000 centrifuges in April, but the IAEA said at the time that Iran had only 328 centrifuges operating at its underground Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran.

In the latest report, drawn up by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, the organization put the number of centrifuges enriching uranium in Natanz at close to 2,000 with another 650 being tested.

The 2,000 figure is an increase of a few hundred of the machines over May, when the IAEA last reported on Iran. Still the rate of expansion is much slower than a few months ago, when the country was assembling close to 200 centrifuges every two weeks.

''The recent report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agrees with Iran's approach and the dispute over Iran's nuclear case has ended,'' Ahmadinejad said. The latest IAEA report noted an increased willingness by the Iranians to answer questions after years of stonewalling.

The U.N, Security Council has so far passed two sets of sanctions targeting Iranian individuals and businesses involved in the country's nuclear and missile programs. The resolutions also ordered countries to stop supplying Iran with materials and technology for these programs.

The latest announcement could spur renewed calls for a third set of sanctions.

U.N. officials have suggested that Iran had slowed its program and increased its cooperation with the agency investigators to avert new sanctions.

Iran's ultimate stated goal for the Natanz facility, the only site now open to full IAEA monitoring, is to run 54,000 centrifuges -- enough for dozens of nuclear weapons a year.

Uranium gas, spun in linked centrifuges, can result in either low-enriched fuel suitable to generate power, or the weapons-grade material that forms the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

Iran insists it wants to master the technology only to meet future power needs and argues it is entitled to enrich under a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty provision giving all pact members the right to develop peaceful programs.

Iran Nuclear Programs Proceeding

The IAEA has tested nuclear waste found in Iran and it has revealed the presence of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, evidence that Iraq's nuclear weapons efforts are proceeding apace and that it might have two such programs: one for uranium and one for plutonium, much as North Korea is believed to have.