US negotiator says he's getting impatient with North Korea
WASHINGTON -- U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill says he's not
threatening to cut off six-party talks with North Korea, but he's
getting impatient over the long-running exercise aimed at ending that
country's nuclear weapons program.
"We can't just sit there stalemated session after stalemated session,"
he said. "I don't want to threaten walkouts, but I do want to see
progress," Hill, an assistant secretary of state, said in an interview
with Associated Press reporters and editors.
The United States and four other nations have been talking
intermittently with North Korea since August 2003 with only halting
progress. The negotiations currently are on hiatus.
Hill said he assumed bargaining would resume around January and that
preliminary meetings might be held in South Korea, another of the
countries engaged in the talks. Besides the United States and the two
Koreas, China, Japan and Russia are involved.
The United States and its partners have offered North Korea economic
incentives in exchange for halting its acknowledged development of
nuclear weapons. In an effort to soothe the government in Pyongyang,
President George W. Bush's administration also has offered assurances
North Korea would not be attacked.
A tentative deal seemed in the making in September, but North Korea has
backtracked, issued angry statements against the United States and
demanded it be provided with a civilian nuclear reactor before it will
agree to dismantle its weapons program. And now it is demanding that
the United States drop economic sanctions against North Korean
interests imposed because of alleged counterfeiting and money
laundering.
"I for one would like to see more commitment from the DPRK to the
central task of the six-party talks -- that is denuclearization -- and
less attention to what I would consider kind of side issues," Hill
said. "If they could get going on denuclearization, a lot of good
things could happen for their country."
DPRK represents the official name of the country, the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea.
Hill said North Korea had been promised only consideration of its
request for a civilian reactor. He also said it first would have to
reverse its nuclear weapons programs before talking about an
electricity-generating nuclear reactor could even begin.
"If they get rid of their weapons, we can start opening the country,"
he said. "And being Korean people, they are going to be successful."
For the most part, though, the soft-spoken diplomat took a tough line.
He said he was willing to go to Pyongyang "in the right circumstances
if it would further progress." But he said he was not "interested in
making gestures, we are interested in making progress."
"I just think it is a very difficult process," he said.
In recent days, in a torrent of hostile rhetoric, North Korea has
railed against U.S. financial sanctions and accused Hill of questioning
even North Korea's right to exist.
Hill shrugged off the invective in the interview.
"They seem to want to talk about everything" but ending their weapons
programs and renewing legal commitments to international inspection, he
said.
Anyway, he said, the United States imposed the financial sanctions in
defense of its currency, a right any government would exercise, and
"we're not prepared to negotiate that." He said North Korea must get
out of the money-laundering business.
While some U.S. partners, particularly South Korea, are inclined to be
more generous in offering economic incentives, Hill said there was a
common resolve among the five to reach a settlement. That partnership
carries over to ending the negotiations if they should prove
unproductive.
"If we decide there is no point (to continuing), we will not be the
only ones," he said. (AP)
December 3, 2005
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