U.S. envoy says North Korea must account for HEU program

North Korea needs to account for its suspected uranium-based nuclear weapons program and has agreed to discuss the issue even as it disavows its existence, the lead U.S. negotiator reaffirmed Thursday amid contradicting claims about the program itself.

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, also chief U.S. delegate to the six-party North Korean nuclear talks, emphasized Pyongyang's purchase of material and equipment related to uranium enrichment.

"At some point, we need to see what has happened to this equipment," he said in a public briefing session at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The program, allegedly involving highly enriched uranium (HEU), was the key cause of the collapse of a 1994 agreement that froze North Korea's nuclear activities. Critics of the latest six-party agreement, reached in Beijing on Feb. 13, argue that the absence of HEU in the accord again makes the issue a potential deal breaker.

Hill said Pyongyang agreed to discuss the issue but he was not confident that it could be resolved easily.

"They have been willing to discuss what we know and to try to resolve this with the idea to resolve this to mutual satisfaction," he said.

"We don't know whether we're going to be able to do that, but we have agreed to have this discussion."

Some technical experts have recently questioned U.S. intelligence that earlier claimed the North's HEU program is advanced enough to churn out several nuclear weapons a year.

David Albright, a physicist who currently heads the Institute for Science and International Security, said last week that such intelligence was "flawed" given what the North is believed to have purchased.

The uranium weapons program, for instance, requires thousands of aluminum tubes, but the North at best has around 20, Albright said after his trip to Pyongyang earlier this month.

Hill appeared to step back somewhat on the HEU.

"It would require a lot more equipment than we know that they have actually purchased. It requires some production techniques, some considerable production techniques that we are not sure whether they have mastered," he said.

Hill also carefully talked about changes in the U.S. military presence in South Korea and in Japan as negotiations begin on a peace treaty that will officially end the 1950-1953 Korean War.

Under the six-party agreement, related countries will negotiate a permanent peace regime at a separate forum to replace a ceasefire agreement.

"I might add... it affects U.S. forces in South Korea," said Hill, referring to nearly 28,000 American troops stationed there as a legacy of the Korean War.

"It affects U.S. forces generally, frankly, including U.S. Forces Japan."

Asked later about his remarks, Hill said any changes would have to be made with caution.

"As you go from an armistice to a peace mechanism, there are different ways you maintain a peace mechanism than you do an armistice," he said.

"My point is, we are going to have to proceed cautiously... our guiding star being the fact that we want to maintain the security and the stability that we've maintained all these years."

Envoys from the six-party members -- South and North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan -- committed to phased steps in their Beijing agreement to ultimately denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, to be achieved by removing all of North Korea's nuclear weapons and programs.

Using plutonium obtained mostly from its 5-megawatt reactor, Pyongyang is believed to have 10 or so atomic weapons.

Parties promised to deliver heavy fuel oil as an incentive for North Korea's shutdown of its primary nuclear facilities and to give more energy aid as well as diplomatic recognition and additional financial assistance when Pyongyang decommissions all of the weapons and programs.

Five working groups would meet by mid-March for follow-up discussions, and foreign ministers from the six governments will meet in Beijing sometime in April.

Defending the agreement, Hill said it was only logical to pursue a step-by-step approach.

"It is unlikely that the North Koreans will roll out of bed in the morning to say, 'We are going to make a strategic decision to get out of all of this,'" he said.

Hill reiterated Washington is prepared to meet its pledges, including the resolution of punitive financial actions taken against Macau's Banco Delta Asia (BDA) by mid-March.

The U.S. Treasury had designated the bank in September 2005 as a primary money laundering concern abetting North Korea's illicit activities that allegedly range from counterfeiting of American currency to narcotics trafficking.

The envoy would not go into details about how the BDA case will be resolved but suggested the final action will be between the U.S. and the Macau bank, not North Korea.

"In this case, the North Koreans are only depositors in this bank. Our issue was between the Treasury Department and the bank," said Hill.

The envoy suggested greater flexibility by the U.S. in engaging North Korea, a shift many noted by the administration that once labeled the regime as part of an "axis of evil."

The U.S. "expanded" the concept of bilateral talks within the six-party negotiations, a decision made at the top level of the government, said Hill.

"I think that required a little flexibility on our part, and I think it was the right call," he said.

"And I can tell you the call was not mine."

Washington, Feb. 22 (Yonhap News)