ANALYSIS
Beijing – The watershed six- party accord concluded Tuesday with North Korea holds huge long-term promise for the Korean Peninsula and beyond, but pitfalls lie ahead.
It could put an end to the Korean War with a peace treaty half a century after hostilities ended, establish diplomatic relations between the United States and North Korea and lay the groundwork for a new security arrangement for Northeast Asia.
It also could lessen tensions between rivals China and Japan by making them work closely on a common aim.
But even with so much at stake, the underlying suspicions among most parties to the accord, and North Korea’s track record as a truculent neighbor, make implementing the initial steps a challenge.
“It’s not the end of the process, it’s the beginning,” U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said.
60-day script
The commitment to provide abundant fuel oil to North Korea in exchange for steps toward dismantling its nuclear program follows a tight script over the next 60 days.
By mid-April, a series of parallel actions is supposed to occur.
North Korea is to list all of its nuclear programs and shut down the reactor that provided the material for the nuclear device it detonated last autumn. The United States and three other nations are to start supplying it with energy.
Gulping hard, perhaps, the United States also promises to lift financial sanctions against North Korea and stop labeling it a rogue sponsor of terrorism.
U.S. officials will be watching carefully when North Korea offers its list of its nuclear programs. Did North Korea come clean? The world knows it has a plutonium program. Did it reveal a secret uranium bomb-making program that Washington alleges it has?
North Korea will have suspicions of its own: Will the United States lift all financial sanctions and be sincere in its security guarantees? Will President Bush really offer diplomatic recognition to a dictatorship that he’s known to loathe?
Japan might balk
Japan also could throw a wrench into the accord. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tuesday that his nation wouldn’t join China, Russia, the United States and South Korea in giving fuel oil to North Korea until Pyong yang resolved a few cases of Japanese citizens whom North Korea’s security agents snatched in decades past.
The four-page accord calls for phased steps over the next 60 days to be conducted simultaneously. They require:
North Korea to “shut down and seal” its Yongbyon nuclear facility as well as another reprocessing plant, and to invite monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct verification.
The U.S. to begin talks with North Korea aimed at “moving toward full diplomatic relations.” It also must begin terminating severe trade restrictions on Pyongyang and lifting its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Japan and North Korea to begin talks to normalize relations and deal with the “settlement of unfortunate past and the outstanding issues of concern.”
$240 million package
During the initial 60-day period, the United States and the other regional powers will provide energy assistance “equivalent to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil.” After that, once North Korea disables “all existing nuclear facilities,” it will receive “economic, energy and humanitarian assistance” up to the value of another 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil.
The value of the total energy package at current market prices is $240 million.
The accord foresees Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the five other foreign ministers trying to midwife a peace treaty for the Korean Peninsula and a broader mechanism “promoting security cooperation in Northeast Asia.”
North and South Korea remain technically at war because a formal peace treaty never has been signed to replace the armistice that ended the fighting in 1953.
