Reuters
Sunday, February 4, 2007
North Korea's top nuclear envoy has told former U.S. officials
that Pyongyang wants more than half a million tonnes of fuel oil
a year in return for suspending its atomic reactor, a Japanese
daily said on Sunday.
Shutting down North Korea's sole operating reactor is expected
to be a key negotiating point when six-country discussions on
ending the North's nuclear weapons programme resume in Beijing
on Thursday, analysts said.
The Asahi Shimbun said North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim
Kye-gwan had set out Pyongyang's position when he met former State
Department official Joel Witt and nuclear expert David Albright
in the North Korean capital last week.
The demand would exceed the energy assistance received by the
impoverished communist state under an 1994 deal with Washington,
which collapsed when the current nuclear crisis began in 2002.
Kim and other North Korean officials said the country would halt
the operation of its reactor at Yongbyon if it obtained energy
assistance equivalent to more than 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil
a year, the Asahi said, quoting the two Americans.
North Korean officials also demanded that Washington lift its
financial sanctions against the country as well as removing North
Korea from the list of "terrorism-sponsoring" nations,
it said.
Kim was likely to have made the demands to U.S. counterpart Christopher
Hill at unprecedented meetings the two men held in Berlin last
month, but might have decided to reiterate them to seek concessions
when the six-party talks resume, Asahi said.
OPTIMISM
Hill said he had not seen the reports on the oil aid, but he
wanted to see tangible steps at the Beijing talks to start North
Korea on the path toward ending its atomic ambitions.
"The ultimate task for us is to complete denuclearisation,
not just to begin denuclearisation," Hill told reporters
before a dinner meeting with South Korea's foreign minister and
chief envoy to the six-way talks.
Hill, who has said he is going to Beijing with a degree of optimism,
told Reuters on Saturday he has been in communication indirectly
with the North's nuclear envoy over the past few weeks via Pyongyang's
mission to the United Nations in New York.
Pyongyang typically publishes demands in its official media before
sessions of the talks between the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia
and the United States, but it has not done so ahead of this week's
session.
However, it did fire a verbal shot at Washington on Sunday.
"The U.S. tramples down other countries by military force
as they have differing ideology and system and do not obey it,"
its KCNA news agency reported.
North Korea has said it will not scrap its nuclear weapons programme
until the United States ends a crackdown on firms it suspects
of aiding Pyongyang in illicit activities.
Talks in Beijing between U.S. Treasury Department and North Korean
officials seeking to resolve the financial standoff, which led
a Macau bank to freeze $24 million in North Korean funds, ended
last Wednesday with no sign of a breakthrough.
(With additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Seoul)
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