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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| US wants written North Korea nuclear commitments |
| 2008-12-17 |
| UNITED NATIONS - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday the Bush administration will keep trying to get North Korea to make written commitments on inspection of its nuclear programs until President George W. Bush leaves office on Jan. 20. Rice told reporters at U.N. headquarters that five of the six parties the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan and Russia “are completely agreed" on how North Korea's past nuclear activities should be verified. “What happened in Beijing was that the North Koreans at this last session wouldn't write them down," she said. “But there is, in fact, a verification protocol and a set of assurances that the five are agreed to and that the North Koreans at least privately before we lifted the terrorist designation had also agreed to," Rice said, “and so we'll just have to work through this." In late June, Bush relaxed trade sanctions against North Korea and moved to take it off the U.S. terrorism blacklist in exchange for Kim Jong Il's decision to hand over a long-awaited accounting of its nuclear bomb-making abilities. The U.S. actions were seen as crucial to making progress in negotiations meant to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons. But Pyongyang balked at putting its commitments on inspections in writing. Rice called North Korea's shutdown and subsequent disabling of its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon “an important step forward" in dealing with its plutonium program. “But we have a lot of questions about the highly enriched uranium route for North Korea. We have a lot of questions about proliferation, and we believe that the mechanism of the six parties and an associated verification protocol will be the best way to resolve those questions and to get to the bottom of the entire nature of the North Korean program," she said. Rice said in response to a question that the Bush administration will leave incoming President Barack Obama “a pretty good framework, but we'll continue to see if we can get the North Koreans to write down the assurances that they gave us." “We're going to continue to work on it until the very last day," she said. |
| Posted by:Steve White |