Reaching Critical Will

23 April 2008: South Korea's foreign minister said the "last work" on securing North Korea's declaration of its nuclear activities is under way and six-nation negotiations could resume next month.

22 April 2008: A a team of US experts met North Korea's top nuclear envoy Kim Kye-Gwan in Pyongyang to discuss the declaration of the North's nuclear activities. The group is led by Sung Kim, director of Korean Affairs office at the State Department. It is due to return 24 April to South Korea. Yonhap news agency said the US team would present a detailed list of data and other materials which North Korea needs to present for verification of its plutonium stockpile. A government source explained, "North Korea is expected to submit a declaration before the end of this month if the US team's activity goes well."

14 April 2008: The Inter Press Service News Agency ran an interesting article on the dissonance between media headlines about six-party talks and the reality of military trends in Northeast Asia: see "Talking Peace, Preparing for War" by John Feffer.

13 April 2008: South Korean President Lee Myung Bak urged North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, and said he will cooperate with other involved nations in persuading North Korea to give up nuclear weapons and added that he will keep the "door open" for dialogue with the North. Meanwhile, Sohn Hak-kyu, leader of the liberal United Democratic Party (South Korea's main opposition party) vowed to hold back the right-leaning government's tougher stance toward North Korea by strengthening the liberal legislative bloc. He warned that the government's conservative approach may damage the momentum toward achieving a peaceful diplomatic solution to North Korea's nuclear weapons program and also cause a setback in South Korea's overall development.

12 April 2008: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied the North Korean nuclear arms issue is resolved, saying the US needs to verify any North Korean declaration of its nuclear activity. During a news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Washington, she said, "We are not yet at a point where we can make a judgment as to whether or not the North Koreans have met their obligations and we are therefore not at a point at which the United States can make a judgment as to whether or not it's time to exercise our obligations." She emphasized that the process involved six nations, not just the US.

On the same day, Radio Free Asia cited "multiple diplomatic sources" in Washington that said a secret agreement was reached between the US and North Korea, under which the US "will make a declaration of North Korea's alleged uranium enrichment program and nuclear cooperation with Syria on behalf of Pyongyang." In return, Radio Free Asia reported, the agreement calls for North Korea to "acknowledge" US concern over the two issues and not to "challenge the facts". The radio station said North Korea agreed to make a complete and correct declaration of its nuclear weapons program "in the coming weeks".

10 April 2008: US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the chief US envoy to the six-party talks, said negotiators have reached an understanding on how to move ahead with deadlocked six-nation disarmament efforts. He said that a meeting with his North Korean counterpart in Singapore this week provided a "way forward," and indicated that coming weeks will be crucial to the plan's success, without elaborating. Hill said a meeting of nuclear envoys from the six nations could take place in Beijing in the next few weeks if all sides "can fulfill their obligations." When he was asked if a six-nation meeting would coincide with the US dropping the North from the terrorism blacklist, Hill said,"When we do the six-party meeting, we will need to be in a position to complete all" elements of the nuclear agreement.

9 April 2008: North Korea's Foreign Ministry said that its negotiators had reached a "consensus" with US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill in Singapore on US political concessions in return for the nuclear declaration.

8 April 2008: At a plenary meeting of the United Nations Disarmament Commission's 2008 session, a representative of North Korea's mission to the UN delivered a statement in which he criticized recent US-South Korean joint military excercises in South Korea, arguing that the exercises were "a nuclear war rehearsal to attack the DPRK by force of arms." He also asserted that "violent remarks to preemptively strike the nuclear base of the DPRK were openly made by the south Korean high ranking military official."

1 April 2008: US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the chief US envoy to the six-party talks, said strained inter-Korean relations won't affect efforts to resume the six-way talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program. While in Seoul, Hill cautioned reporters against "overreacting" to the building tension between North and South Korea. Hill's comments followed North Korea's condemnation of South Korea's new president, Lee Myung-bak, who reportedly wants to link inter-Korean ties to progress at the multilateral nuclear talks. Commentary published in North Korea's main daily Rodong Sinmun warned that Seoul's tougher policies on the North could lead to "catastrophic consequences". It said, "The Lee regime will be held fully accountable for the irrevocable catastrophic consequences to be entailed by the freezing of the inter-Korean relations and the disturbance of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula due to its sycophancy towards the U.S. and its moves for confrontation with the North."

26 March 2008: Christopher Hill, the chief US envoy to the six-party talks, warned Tuesday that internal politics in North Korea could interfere with the nuclear deal. He said Pyongyang had informed Washington on a number of occasions that it wanted to reach the deal before President George W. Bush left office in January 2009, but indicated, "North Korea is a country that has a very vertically oriented governing structure to be sure ... And so I think it is fair to say that there are people in North Korea who really are not with the program here, really rather continue to be producing this plutonium for whatever reason."

14 March 2008: US assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill met with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, for eight hours of negotiations. He said that other members of the six-party talks - South Korea, China, Russia and Japan - were briefed and that discussions would continue over the weekend.Sung Kim, chief of the Korean affairs office, stayed behind in case of a possible follow-up with the North Koreans, but it wasn't yet decided whether there would be more meetings. Hill told reporters that the talks in Geneva were probably the most substantive that the United States has had with North Korea since problems developed in December over disarming Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program: "We certainly are further along in this consultation than we were when I arrived this morning," Hill said after meetings withKim Kye-gwan. "There has been progress."

13 March 2008: The top nuclear negotiators from the United States and North Korea met in Geneva to resume talks over the stalled aid-for-disarmament deal. Before going to the meeting, US negotiator Christopher Hill told reporters, "I think we should be a little flexible on format, but with the understanding that flexibility on format doesn't mean flexibility on getting a complete and correct declaration." On 12 March, the Washington Post reported there are "signs that the two sides, with the help of China, have structured a diplomatic framework that could resolve an impasse that has blocked a deal to end Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs."

10 March 2008: US Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow said North Korea must send a "clear signal" to fully declare its nuclear programmes in order to get itself removed from a list of state sponsors of terrorism. He argued, "They have not yet shown us even the elements of what will constitute a complete and concrete declaration," saying the US couldn't remove the country from its terrorist list "until we see a clear signal from the North Koreans that they are going to do their part with regards to the declaration."

3 March 2008: North Korea's KCNA news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying that US-South Korean war games that started on the weekend "show that the United States continues to pursue its hostile policy of squeezing our republic to death," and warned that they would "put the brakes on the denuclearisation process on the Korean peninsula." The New York Times reported that the criticism "dampened hopes for warmer ties between the United States and North Korea," though US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said he still hopes for resumption of six-party talks: "If we can resolve these matters in the next few weeks, which I think is possible, I think we could depending on the views of the Chinese host, get together for a 6-party meeting to plan the next phase."

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