By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
A think tank in Washington has put forward a road map to a nuclear-free North Korea under which political and financial costs of the peace process are supposed to be shared among the stakeholder governments of the multilateral security talks.
Last month saw a string of positive signs in the settlement of the North Korean issue after the chief U.S. negotiator to the six-party talks Christopher Hill visited Pyongyang, the first visit by a senior U.S. official in almost five years.
``The North Korean issue is closer to resolution than is generally recognized. The obvious path forward is a step-by-step process that over time satisfies both sides __ the U.S. and North Korea,'' Prof. David C. Kang of Dartmouth College said in an e-mail interview with The Korea Times.
The political scientist said that President George W. Bush and other key decision makers dealing with North Korea are ``serious about resolving the nuclear situation.''
He observed the North Korean nuclear program is different in nature from other major international crises facing the world.
``In contrast to problems in Iran, Iraq or even between Palestine and Israel, both the U.S. and North Korea have agreed multiple times, explicitly and in writing on the basic outlines for resolving their differences,'' he said.
Kang added that much discussion was going on in Washington about how to steer the multi-party security talks to bring sustainable peace on the Korean peninsula in the coming months.
The question is what options the decision makers have in mind to achieve the complete dismantlement of Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
``My opinion is that it is highly unlikely that North Korea will go first without any response by the United States.''
Shortly after Hill visited Seoul after completing his 22-hour mission in Pyongyang, there was a report that U.S. decision makers were considering applying a Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) strategy to the North.
In December 2005, a group of North Korea experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) __ Joel S. Wit, Jon Wolfsthal and Oh Choong-suk __ proposed that the Bush administration should consider a CTR for North Korea as a feasible and realistic option.
CTR was designed to dismantle nuclear production facilities in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and has been implemented since 1991.
Under the program, partner governments work closely to dismantle nuclear production facilities and help build alternative industry infrastructure.
The threat reduction policy involves programs redirecting former weapons of mass destruction programs, production facilities and technical personnel to civilian purposes.
According to the CSIS experts, the U.S. has invested $7 billion in CTR programs in the former Soviet Union since 1991 and the program has led to the removal of 6,600 nuclear warheads. Also more than 470 long-range missile silos have been destroyed and over 1,800 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, submarines and strategic bombers eliminated.
The North Korea version of a CTR creates a key question of who is going to pay for the program projected to cost somewhere between $200 million and $500 million.
The North Korea experts suggested the political and financial burden be shared with the remaining four stakeholder countries in the six-party talks.