S. Korea, US Mull Incentives for NK
Christopher Hill to Visit Yongbyon Nuclear Facilities
By Yoon Won-sup
Staff Reporter
South Korea and the United States agreed on Monday to provide political incentives to North Korea in accordance with the communist country's action toward denuclearization.
``We can provide political and security incentives to North Korea as far as the North denuclearizes,'' Chun Young-woo, the chief South Korean negotiator to the six-party talks on the North's nuclear programs, told reporters after discussion with his U.S. counterpart Christopher Hill in Seoul.
Chun said, for example, the United States can remove North Korea from a list of countries sponsoring terrorism and terminate the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to North Korea.
Chun's remarks came in the middle of North Korea's repeated position that it will not implement the disabling of the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon unless Washington stops the designation and application.
As North Korea closed the Yongbyon nuclear facilities in return for the 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil under the six-party agreement in February, it is supposed to advance to the next phase of disabling the facility.
The disabling issue will be the top agenda during the upcoming six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, Russia, China and Japan on Wednesday in Beijing.
Regarding the North's recent request to have a military talks with the United States for the peace system on the Korean Peninsula, Chun said that the peace process should be discussed under the framework of the six-party talks.
North Korea has tried to exclude South Korea from the talks of converting the armistice into a peace treaty drafted at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, arguing the South was not a signatory to the deal.
Chun said that he set a goal and agenda regarding the six-way talks with Hill through coordination.
Hill, meanwhile, said he would visit Yongbyon when necessary. But he said he has no plan of going to North Korea again soon.
``We'll do what we need to do as long as it's in our interests of making progress in six-party process,'' Hill said. ``But we don't have any immediate plan right now.''
The chief U.S. nuclear envoy also said that the United States wants the inter-Korean summit to be coordinated with the nuclear talks process.
South Korea began Monday a second shipment of 7,500 tons of heavy fuel oils out of 50,000 tons and the first shipment of 6,200 tons was already unloaded in North Korea, according to the Unification Ministry.
The South will send the remaining 43,800 tons to the North by the Aug. 1 deadline.
If North Korea disables the Yongbyon nuclear facilities, it will get additional 950,000 tons of heavy fuel oil or the equivalent aid according to the Feb. 13 agreement.
Chun and Hill will leave for Beijing on Tuesday for the talks, and Hill will meet with his North Korean counterpart Kim Gye-gwan to discuss normalization of Washington-Pyongyang relations prior to the six-party talks.