Beijing – Arms negotiators failed to agree on a deadline for North Korea to disable its nuclear facilities, the United States said Thursday, casting doubt on when Pyongyang will proceed with its promised disarmament after shuttering its sole operating reactor.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill entered the six-nation talks this week, saying he hoped to get a commitment from the North to declare its nuclear programs and disable them by year’s end – rendering the communist nation unable to easily make more bombs.
But on the eve of the talks’ end today, he said the sides had agreed to have working groups of experts pore over technical details for those next steps before the top envoys from all sides endorse a time frame. The working groups likely will meet by the end of August, he said.
“Had we made our deadlines in the spring, I think there would have been much more appetite for announcing deadlines now,” he told reporters.
The North missed an April deadline for shutting down its reactor by three months due to a separate banking dispute that Washington had pledged to resolve.
The reactor shutdown Saturday was the first step North Korea has taken to scale back its nuclear ambitions since the crisis began in late 2002, when a 1994 disarmament deal fell apart and the North reactivated its reactor.
“This is terra incognito, you know we haven’t done this before,” Hill said of the upcoming steps. “So I think we can look ahead to some difficulties, but we’ll manage the difficulties.”
Still, Hill said he believed the North could complete disabling its nuclear facilities by a year-end deadline.
“I feel that it’s quite feasible by the end of the year,” he said.
The talks – including China, Japan, Russia, the U.S. and the two Koreas – had been scheduled to end Thursday, but Hill said they were being extended a day for the sides to meet with China’s foreign minister today before the Chinese hosts issue a statement summing up the session.
All six countries’ foreign ministers are to hold a meeting in accord with a previous agreement from the talks, which Hill said would likely be set in September.
