Beijing – After more than a year of stalemate, North Korea agreed Saturday evening to return to disarmament talks late this month and pledged to discuss eliminating its nuclear- weapons program, according to senior Bush administration officials.
The agreement came during a dinner meeting, with the Chinese as the hosts, between Christopher Hill, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea who recently was made the lead U.S. negotiator to the talks, and Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea’s deputy foreign minister, according to a senior official traveling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The official Korean Central News Agency also issued a statement from Pyongyang announcing that the talks would resume.
While the North Koreans have pledged many times before to return to the six-party talks – the United States, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia also sit at the table – this is the first time they actually have set a date: the week of July 25.
The Chinese have offered to be the hosts of the discussions, and “all the parties have agreed,” said the senior administration official, who did not want to be identified because Rice had not made a formal announcement.
Rice, who is beginning a four- nation tour of Asia, and Li Zhaoxing, the Chinese foreign minister, plan to announce the agreement this morning.
U.S. officials were trying to lower expectations.
“Frankly,” one of the administration officials said, “we just don’t know” what will come of the talks if they do take place.
The long-awaited return to negotiations carries considerable diplomatic perils on all sides and would take place just as three European nations are scheduled to conduct talks with Iran about giving up critical elements of its nuclear program.
North Korea’s economic situation has continued to deteriorate, by most accounts. To increase the pressure, the Bush administration has put in place plans for a series of coercive actions – crackdowns on North Korean shipments of drugs, counterfeit currency and arms – that would probably be accelerated if the negotiations session made no progress.
“We’ve made it clear they can’t just come back and lecture us, like the last sessions,” said a senior administration official in Washington. “Either they get on the path to disarmament, or we move to Plan B.”
But President Bush’s options also are limited, officials acknowledge. China has been unwilling to participate in an economic embargo.
Military action to halt North Korea’s declared efforts to build its nuclear arsenal has been ruled out as too risky and virtually impossible while U.S. forces are tied up in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Bush has been resisting pressure from China and South Korea to improve an offer to the North Koreans he made in June 2004. To avoid failure at the talks, he may have to decide whether to make explicit concessions, including the promise of eventual normalization of relations with a nation that just two months ago he said was run by a “tyrant” who puts dissidents in “concentration camps.”
In interviews in Washington in recent days, officials have said they fear three major stumbling blocks to an agreement.
The first is the question of whether North Korea is willing to negotiate away all elements of its nuclear program. That includes dismantling the plutonium- manufacturing facilities it has acknowledged – centered on a huge nuclear complex at Yongbyon, north of the capital – and leading inspectors to what the United States charges is a second, secret nuclear program.
The second likely stumbling block is timing, U.S. officials say.
North Korea does not trust the United States to deliver on its promises if it gives up its nuclear program first.
Bush has said publicly that he does not trust Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.
The third potential problem is verification. North Korea has never allowed inspectors free reign of the country and threw out the International Atomic Energy Agency on New Year’s Day 2003. A result is that American officials are uncertain where the North may be hiding elements of its program.