Uranium enrichment remains a hurdle for U.S.-North Korean relations

Despite more subdued diplomacy, the US continues to accuse North Korea of hiding a uranium enrichment program.

By Donald Kirk | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the November 30, 2007 edition

Page 1 of 2

Seoul, South Korea - A flurry of official traffic between Washington, Seoul, and Pyongyang suggests a warming relationship between the US and North Korea even as negotiators look for a face-saving way to get around one critical remaining issue: The highly enriched uranium program that North Korea firmly denies.

As the US envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, prepares to visit the North Korean nuclear complex at Yongbyon next week, analysts here see the US technical team overseeing its disablement as a precursor to diplomatic relations between Washington and Pyongyang.

"Having completed verification of disablement at Yongbyon, they will not just return to Washington," predicts Park Jung Song, a senior fellow at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, affiliated with the foreign ministry. "If the US thinks it's OK, they will go on with the normalization process."

That observation reflects the sense that North Korea, desperate for economic aid, is in a mood to follow through on demands needed to attract investment and engage in significant foreign trade.

First among them is the "denuclearization," the prerequisite for the US to take North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and remove its ban on trade with the North.

The problem, however, is that the US insists on acknowledgment by North Korea of a program for developing nuclear warheads with enriched uranium that the US says has been going on for years entirely separately from the program at Yongbyon for building warheads with plutonium at their core.

Mr. Hill, when he goes to Pyongyang, will press North Korea to live up to its promise to come clean on its entire nuclear program. The statement, however, may not appear in the "declaration" that North Korea will deliver to the Chinese host of the six-nation process – talks that are aimed at convincing North Korea to abandon its nuclear program in return for vast infusions of aid.

"That is not easy," says Paik Hak Soon at the Sejong Institute, which often advises the government here on its policy of reconciliation. "North Korea's position has been they do not have any such program."

Page 1 | 2 | Next Page