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.

from the November 30, 2007 edition

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The way out of the impasse, says Mr. Paik, will be for North Korea to admit importing "high-intensity aluminum tubes" for "dual use" – for industry or for enriching uranium. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has said the tubes were provided by the disgraced physicist A.Q. Khan, "the father" of Pakistan's atomic bomb, who is now under house arrest in his villa for spreading nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran, and Libya.

"The maximum we can expect from North Korea is how many aluminum tubes were imported, how [many were] used, how [many were] left, and where they were installed," says Paik. "I don't think we can expect more than that."

Hill, visiting here Thursday, seems eager for the next phase of the accord reached with North Korea in February and again at six-nation talks in October. By the end of the year, he says, he's hoping North Korea will not only have disabled its facilities at Yongbyon but will also have disclosed its nuclear inventory.

Then, he says, "we can move on to the next phase," "dismantlement" of all that's been "disabled" at Yongbyon as well as other nuclear facilities, including presumably the site at which the North exploded an underground warhead Oct. 9, 2006.

Anticipating his first visit to the Yongbyon site, he says he expects he will "draw some optimism about what's been done and also will have some pessimism about what has to be done."

Hill hints at compromise, though, when it comes to North Korea's uranium program.

North Korea "has said they do not have a uranium program," he says. "They also have said they will address this issue." If the program is no longer active, he says the US will settle for "an understanding of the past program" but "cannot put ourselves in the position of trying to ignore things."

In the end, he believes, it will be possible to reach agreement "to mutual satisfaction."

As Hill was meeting with South Korean officials, Kim Yong Gon, North Korea's top intelligence figure arrived here for talks with South Korea's unification minister about carrying out the economic agreements reached during South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun's summit in Pyongyang in October with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il.

In Pyongyang, the North and South Korean defense ministers failed to agree on revision of the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea south of which North Korean fishing boats are banned but came up with a seven-point security guarantee for inter-Korean projects.

"North Korea is in a very critical situation," says Choi Jin Wook, senior fellow at the Korea Institute of National Unification. "They want to push the situation. This is all about the relationship with the US."

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