By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
There is no written, audio or video evidence of North Korea's commitment to allow international inspectors to take samples or other scientific activities at nuclear sites in the communist state, a U.S. newspaper reported Monday.
Whether North Korea will agree to sampling or not is key to establishing protocol to verify Pyongyang's declaration of its nuclear programs and materials, made in June.
The United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia will hold a new round of denuclearization talks Dec. 8 to discuss the protocol and finalize the second-phase of a disarmament-for-aid deal reached in February last year.
Chief U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill visited Pyongyang in October when the North stepped up efforts to reverse the denuclearization deal by reprocessing a main nuclear plant in Yongbyon, citing a delay in its removal from a U.S. terrorism blacklist.
Hill said after the visit that the North had agreed to finalize a verification protocol with its removal from the blacklist. The protocol will allow outside experts to conduct scientific procedures, including sampling and forensic activities.
But North Korea insists it never made a promise to allow sampling, saying it accepted a document with no specific enforcement measures. In a foreign ministry statement, the regime said it had only agreed with the United States to allow inspectors to access its nuclear facilities, discuss documents and interview people related to its atomic programs.
A senior State Department official was quoted by the Washington Times as saying that there is ``no written, audio or video evidence exists of North Korea's commitment to allow sampling at its nuclear sites.''
Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, was quoted as saying that the Bush administration's failure to secure a verification protocol shows that it ``prematurely removed North Korea'' from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring states.
``Who's telling the truth? There is no way to know, since Washington has relied on ambiguous text, oral agreements and side letters to keep the negotiations going, but allowing North Korea to avoid full compliance,'' he said.
Under the so-called Feb. 13 deal, North Korea is supposed to receive one million tons of heavy fuel oil or its equivalent in aid and other political concessions from the five other countries, in return for disabling its nuclear facilities and programs.
The four, except for Japan, have shipped nearly 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil or its equivalent in aid to the North. Seoul, which chairs a six-party working group for energy assistance, has provided about 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil and 66,000 tons of energy-related materials or equipment to Pyongyang.
Pyongyang has removed about 60 percent of spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon reactor, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.