by
B. C. Koh
[Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Chicago]
posted July 30, 2007
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 Preface : |
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Article : |
The Head of Delegation Meeting of the Sixth Round of the Six-Party Talks, held in Beijing from July 18 to July 20, 2007, had several notable aspects. First, its official designation, coupled with the press communiqué released at its recess, suggested that like its predecessor, the Sixth Round, too, would feature multiple sessions separated by recesses of varying length. Second, although it failed to produce an agreement on a schedule for the next steps -- notably the North’s declaration of “all nuclear programs” and the disablement of its nuclear facilities -- it nonetheless paved the way for achieving them. Third, it occurred against the backdrop of what U.S. chief delegate Christopher Hill called the “first real development in terms of implementing the September 2005 agreement -- i.e., the “shutdown of the Yongbyon complex” and the return of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to that complex.
Resolution of the BDA Issue
It was the Banco Delta Asia (BDA) issue that had prevented the Sixth Round of the Six-Party Talks from making any headway when it convened on March 19, 2007, forcing it to enter into recess -- a recess that lasted four months. Neither the U.S. nor the DPRK appeared to have foreseen the complexity and difficulty of implementing the agreement, announced on the same day the Sixth Round convened, that $25 million in fifty-two North Korea-related accounts that had been frozen at BDA since September 2006 would be transferred to an account held by North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank at the Bank of China. Pyongyang’s refusal to take the agreement at face value and insistence on a verification of the actual transfer of the funds before it would take part in any substantive discussion at the Six-Party Talks, in retrospect, proved to be a well-calculated move.
The main hurdle to the transfer of the funds in question was the difficulty of finding a bank that would accept the tainted money, which carried the risk of spawning adverse side effects for the receiving bank on international financial transactions. Although the North could have withdrawn the money in cash, it insisted on a wire transfer with the aim, in the view of experts, of “signaling to financial institutions that it was once again part of the financial system.” With Christopher Hill reportedly playing a pivotal role, a formula for breaking the impasse was found in mid-June. The BDA first transferred the funds to the Macao Monetary Authority, which in turn transferred them to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The latter then transferred the funds to the Russian Central Bank and then to the Far Eastern Bank in Vladivostock, in which North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank had an account. Russia had requested and received U.S. assurances that “its financial institutions would not be punished by any anti-money laundering statutes or regulations.”
The North lost no time in inviting IAEA inspectors to Pyongyang to discuss plans for shutting down the Yongbyon reactor. The breakthrough also paved the way for a surprise visit by Hill to Pyongyang. His two-day visit from June 21 to 22 marked the first high-level visit to the North by a U.S. government official in five years. Hill held talks with his counterparts, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan and Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun. Hill described the talks as being “very detailed, very substantive…and very useful and positive.” He said that he had come away from the two-day set of meetings “buoyed by a sense that we are going to be able to achieve our full objectives, that is complete denuclearization, but also burdened by the realization of the fact that we are going to have to spend a great deal of time, a great deal of effort, and a lot work in achieving these.”
The shutdown of the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon and Taechon
An IAEA delegation led by Deputy Director General Olli Heinonen visited the North from June 26 to 29 to reach an understanding for “monitoring and verification by the IAEA of the shutdown of theYongbyon nuclear facility and the reactor under construction in Taechon.” That paved the way for the return of IAEA inspectors to Yongbyon on July 12. The North, however, waited until the arrival on July 14 of the first shipment of heavy fuel oil (HFO) from the South -- totaling 6,200 tons -- before shutting down the Yongbyon complex. The IAEA reported that its team of inspectors on the scene was “informed that the DPRK on that day shut down the following facilities: the Yongbyon Experimental Nuclear Power Plant No. 1, the Radiochemical Laboratory [reprocessing plant], the Yongbyon Nuclear Fabrication Plant, the Yongbyon Nuclear Power Plant No. 2, and the Nuclear Power Plant at Taechon.”
The IAEA team not only confirmed the shutdown of these facilities but also “applied the necessary seals and other measures as appropriate.” It was expected to complete the “necessary surveillance and monitoring equipment. . . in the next few weeks.” Stating that the IAEA was receiving “good cooperation from the DPRK,” IAEA Director General Mohamed El Baradei said that “this is an important step in the right direction but only the first in a long journey.” On July 28 a second team of six IAEA inspectors arrived in Yongbyon to replace the initial team.
The 50,000 tons of HFO the South had agreed to provide the North under the February 13 agreement was shipped in five consignments, with the final consignment of 22,600 tons leaving the southern port of Ulsan on July 29.
Six-Party Talks Resume
It was against this backdrop that Six-Party Talks resumed in Beijing on July 18. Whereas the last meeting, held in Beijing from March 19 to 21, was called the First Session of the Sixth Round, the July meeting was labeled the “Head of Delegation Meeting of the Sixth Round.” The first-ever on the ground compliance with a part of the landmark February 13 agreement gave rise to an upbeat mood on the part of the participants. The chief delegates of the U.S., South Korea, and Japan, while expressing hope that the second-phase goals of extracting the North’s declaration of all of its nuclear programs as well the disablement of all existing nuclear facilities could be met by the end of the year, nonetheless cautioned that shutting down the Yongbyon reactor was only the first step and that the road ahead would not be smooth.
Dispensing with an opening ceremony, the parties began bilateral consultations on the first day. Hill and Kim Kye Gwan visited each other’s embassies, holding two rounds of bilateral talks. The hope that an agreement on the deadline of the next steps could be reached, however, was rudely dashed. Invoking the “action for action” principle enshrined in the February 13 agreement, the North insisted on tightly coordinating reciprocal steps -- linking disarmament steps to an end to economic sanctions, removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, removal from provision of the Trading with the Enemy Act, and less hostility from Japan.
In lieu of a chairman’s statement, the meeting simply released a press communiqué on the third and final day. It enunciated what it called “general consensus” on what is to be done in the “next phase.”
- North Korea reaffirmed its readiness to “earnestly fulfill its commitments to a complete declaration of all nuclear programs and disablement of all existing facilities.”
- Other parties reiterated their commitments to provide the North with “economic, energy and humanitarian assistance up to the equivalent of 950,000” tons of HFO as stipulated in the February 13 agreement.
- Five working groups (WGs) will meet before the end of August to discuss plans for implementation. They are for (1) denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, (2) normalizing DPRK-U.S. relations, (3) normalizing DPRK-Japan relations, (4) economy and energy cooperation, and (5) Northeast Asia peace and security mechanism.
- The Second Session of the Sixth Round of the Six-Party Talks will be held in Beijing in early September to hear reports of WGs and draw the road map for implementation.
- Following the Second Session of the Six-Party Talks, the parties will hold a ministerial meeting in Beijing as soon as possible.
In contrast to the verdict in the press that the talks had failed, Christopher Hill tried to put a positive spin on them. The goal of the head of delegation meeting, he stressed, was “not to lay out the specific time schedule ahead,” nor was it “to determine the type and scope of disablement, for example, of the Yongbyon facility” or “to lay out with precision what the full declaration will mean.” He added: “It was really to get an idea of what the sequencing of events will be. I had personally hoped that we could get an overall timeframe and I was looking to see if we could get this done by the end of this calendar year. I do believe that is very much feasible, but it was not something we wanted to put in any press communiqué from the head of delegation meeting.”
Hill’s explanation of why, for example, deliberations by the energy and economic assistance working group are indispensable merits attention. Because the North currently can absorb no more than 50,000 tons of HFO per month, agreeing on what the equivalent of 950,000 tons of HFO will encompass is essential. If only HFO is to be provided, it will take 19 months to supply the stipulated amount to the North. Some options include “building storage capacity so that the DPRK could have more than 50,000 tons per month,” “refurbishing” some power plants that would take HFO, and the “provision of electricity across a neighboring state.” All of these scenarios necessitate careful deliberations by experts in a working group, Hill suggested.
These, according to Hill, were the types of things the chief delegates discussed. It was, moreover, a “good discussion…free of a lot of the sort of polemics we’ve been subjected to in the past.”
Prospects
The record of the Six-Party Talks thus far, however, cautions us not to raise our hopes too high. To mention but a few potential sources of discord, 1) how will the North deal with the suspected highly-enriched uranium (HEU) program?; and 2) will it agree to a method of disabling nuclear facilities that will approximate CVID -- a complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement? Or will the U.S., South Korea, and Japan accept something that falls short of CVID? What of the North’s insistence that a light-water reactor must be provided prior to, not following, denuclearization?
Additionally, how will Japan deal with the abduction issue in the Japan-DPRK relations working group? What of the terrorism list and the Trading with the Enemy Act issues in the U.S.-DPRK relations working group?
In a word, the road to a September meeting of the Six-Party Talks will be long, hard, and bumpy. The second phase of the February 13 agreement may well prove to be much harder to implement than the first phase.
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