US-Koreandealonarmsleaveskeypointsopen

1、U.S.-Korean Deal on Arms Leaves Key Points Open 窗体顶端By JOSEPH KAHN and DAVID E. SANGERPublished: September 20, 2005BEIJING, Sept. 19 - After a tense weekend of heated debate within the Bush administration, the lead American negotiator with North Korea made one last call to Washington at noon on Mond

2、ay, Beijing time, and then signed a statement of principles that committed North Korea, in black and white, to give up "all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs."Skip to next paragraph Text of Joint Statement From Nuclear Talks (September 19, 2005) But the negotiator, Christopher

3、Hill, had misgivings because the vaguely worded agreement left unaddressed the date disarmament would happen, and hinted at a concession to North Korea that President Bush and his aides had long said they would never agree to: discussing "at an appropriate time" providing North Korea with

4、a civilian nuclear power plant, which would keep that nation in the nuclear business. The plant, a light-water reactor, cannot produce fuel for nuclear bombs as efficiently as North Korea's existing nuclear plants. All day Monday, Washington time, the Bush administration said the only appropriat

5、e time would be well after North Korea dismantled all its nuclear facilities and allowed highly intrusive inspections of the country. On Monday evening, less than 24 hours after the deal was signed, North Korea declared that the United States "should not even dream" that it would dismantle

6、 its nuclear weapons before it receives a new nuclear plant.As described by senior Bush administration officials and Asian participants in the talks, Mr. Bush agreed to eventual discussions on providing a nuclear plant only after China turned over a draft of an agreement and told the Americans they

7、had hours to take it or leave it.The North Koreans, dependent on China for food and oil, were unhappy but ready to sign. "They said, 'Here's the text, and we're not going to change it, and we suggest you don't walk away,' " said one senior American official at the cente

8、r of the debate. Several officials, who would not allow their names to be used because they did not want to publicly discuss Mr. Bush's political challenges, noted that Mr. Bush is tied down in Iraq, consumed by Hurricane Katrina, and headed into another standoff over Iran's nuclear program.

9、 The agreement, they said, provides him with a way to forestall, at least for now, a confrontation with another member of what he once famously termed "the axis of evil." So after two days of debates that reached from Mr. Bush's cabin in Camp David to Condoleezza Rice's suite at th

10、e Waldorf-Astoria in New York to Tokyo, Moscow and Seoul, Mr. Bush gave the go-ahead on Sunday evening, once he had returned to the White House, to signing a preliminary accord with Kim Jong Il, a leader he has said he detests. Had he decided to let the deal fall through, participants in the talks f

11、rom several countries said, China was prepared to blame the United States for missing a chance to bring a diplomatic end to the confrontation.The debate over signing the agreement reflected the fact that the North Koreans drove a tough bargain. The agreement has the potential to generate good will f

12、or North Korea, increase the aid it receives and possibly reduce its incentive to dismantle its nuclear programs anytime soon. "The risk of this agreement is exactly what many hawks in Washington had warned about," said Peter Beck of the International Crisis Group in Seoul. "You reduc

13、e the sense of urgency and let people grow comfortable with the status quo."Proponents of the deal say such fears are misplaced. They argue that the six-nation talks, involving China, Russia, South Korea and Japan as well as North Korea and the United States, exerted heavy pressure on the North

14、 to adhere to international norms. All the benefits North Korea was promised in the agreement, including economic aid, security commitments, a possible normalization of relations with the United States, and a large infusion of electricity from South Korea, will not flow until it rejoins the Nuclear

15、Nonproliferation Treaty and readmits international nuclear inspectors.In the end, participants in the discussions said, Mr. Bush decided he had little choice but to sign. He concluded several years ago that there were no acceptable military options for taking out the North's two separate nuclear

16、 programs.Mr. Bush sounded cautious about it on Monday after a meeting in the Cabinet Room. "Now there is a way forward," he said. "They have said, in principle, that they will abandon their weapons programs. And what we have said is great, that's a wonderful step forward, but now

17、 we've got to verify whether or not that happens." His caution may reflect the fact that the accord, the culmination of two years of difficult negotiation, still left the administration short of its goal, requiring two major concessions that will take months, maybe years, to fully resolve.T

18、he accord makes no mention of the Bush administration's contention that North Korea has a secret, underground program to use enriched uranium to produce nuclear bomb fuel. North Korea has denied trying to produce nuclear fuel through enriched uranium, though it has acknowledged using plutonium f

19、rom its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon for that purpose.A nuclear program that depends on enriched uranium, like the one that made Pakistan a nuclear power, is much harder to monitor than a plutonium program.Intelligence assessments, partly based on information from Seoul, that North Korea was building

20、 a secret uranium program were the basis of the administration's declaration in 2002 that North Korea had violated the terms of a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration to end its nuclear efforts. That began the standoff that prompted North Korea to withdraw from the nonproliferation tre

21、aty, expel international inspectors, restart its reactor at Yongbyon, and claim that it had expanded its arsenal of atomic bombs. Intelligence agencies say North Korea may now have fuel for six or eight weapons, but that is an educated guess, they concede.Skip to next paragraph Text of Joint Stateme

22、nt From Nuclear Talks (September 19, 2005) Despite that history, the new agreement does not explicitly address the existence of a uranium program. North Korea still denies having one, despite growing evidence that it at least tried to develop bomb fuel that way with Pakistan's help.A senior admi

23、nistration official said the uranium program was covered by the agreement because it required North Korea to dismantle all of its existing nuclear facilities, not specific plants or labs. But the accord did not require North Korea to own up to what the administration had described as its biggest dec

24、eption, meaning that unless the North admits to the program in a declaration of all its nuclear facilities, inspectors would have to work to uncover the uranium program in an adversarial way down the road.The second concession involved the North Korean demand that it receive a light-water nuclear re

25、actor as a down payment for scrapping its weapons program. Allowing North Korea to have a light-water reactor raises what for the Bush administration are unwelcome parallels with the 1994 Clinton administration agreement, which several administration officials, including Ms. Rice, had described as d

26、eeply flawed. The 1994 accord promised North Korea two light-water reactors in exchange for freezing its nuclear program. Construction on a site for the reactors began in the 1990's, but the reactors were never delivered. The United States said Monday that the consortium that provided those reac

27、tors would go out of business at the end of the year, meaning any new deal would have to begin from scratch.Mr. Hill, in an interview, said that the administration "didn't want to see any mention" of providing North Korea with a light-water reactor in the statement of principles. But t

28、he Chinese included it. The United States also balked at the use of the vague term "appropriate" to describe the timing. South Korea, Russia and China were happy to accept that language, because it left open the question of when the North would receive the nuclear reactor, officials of several countries said. To break the impasse, Ms. Rice came up with a compromise during meetings on Saturday afternoon with her South Korean and