To get aid, come out of the cold, N Korea agrees to disarm nukes

Perhaps equally important, the US and Japan agreed to discuss normalizing relations with Pyongyang. The US will begin the process of removing North Korea from its designation as a terror-sponsoring state and also on ending US trade and financial sanctions.

Among the negotiators, Japan did not agree to the aid package, however, saying it first needs to work out further bilateral issues regarding abductions by the North.

The accord sets a 60-day deadline for North Korea to accomplish the first steps toward disarmament, and leaves until an undefined moment — and to another negotiation — the actual removal of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the fuel manufactured to produce them.

Under the agreement, the first part of the aid — 50,000 tons of fuel oil, or an equivalent value of economic or humanitarian aid — would be provided by South Korea, Russia, China and the US; in the case of the US, that would require congressional approval, which is likely to be difficult to get. For disabling the reactor and declaring all nuclear programs, the North will eventually receive another 950,000 tons in aid. Further negotiations are to begin on March 19 in Beijing.

The agreement was read to all delegates in a conference room at a Chinese state guesthouse and Chinese envoy Wu Dawei asked if there were any objections. When none were made, the officials all stood and applauded. But North Korea has sidestepped previous agreements, and is thought to have many mountainside tunnels where it can hide projects.

The deal marks the first concrete plan for disarmament in more than three years of six-nation negotiations.

The deal places new requirements on both North Korea and the US within the 60-day period. Besides closing and sealing Yongbyon, North Korea will “discuss” with the other nations a list of all its nuclear programs, including plutonium extracted from used fuel rods. International inspectors are to verify the process. The ultimate goal is the complete denuclearisation of North Korea, and the next round of talks is expected to begin to wade into the thicket of disputes over how to carry this out.

The steps outlined require the North to provide a complete list of its nuclear programs, including an inventory of its plutonium stockpile. It must also disable all nuclear facilities, including “graphite-moderated reactors and reprocessing facilities”.

The agreement marks a major change of course for the Bush administration that has been beset by six years of virulent internal arguments over whether to negotiate with North Korea or squeeze the government of Kim until it collapses.

It is reconciled in part because the agreement was also signed by the North’s immediate neighbours, including China.

“If they renege on this,” said one senior Bush administration official, who would not speak on the record because the deal was yet to be signed, “they are sticking their fingers into the eyes of the Chinese.” Nonetheless, some administration officials acknowledged that they had concluded that a step-by-step accord was their only choice and that it would be impossible to set a schedule for the North’s disarmament without taking initial steps to build trust. Even before it was signed in Beijing, John R Bolton, who left his post as American ambassador to the United Nations two months ago, denounced the accord. “I think that this deal with North Korea undercuts the sanctions resolution” that he pushed through in October at the UN Security Council, after the North’s nuclear test, CNN reported. The disarmament process promises to be enormously complex, far harder than dismantling Libya’s comparatively small nuclear complex three years ago. Libya never produced nuclear material, whereas North Korea is believed to have made one or two weapons, or the fuel for them, nearly two decades ago, and perhaps a half dozen or more since 2003.

But American officials are uncertain exactly how many weapons the North possesses, and in the second phase of the accord, the North would have to explain what it did with the uranium-enrichment equipment that it apparently purchased in the 1990s from Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan, whose network also supplied Iran and Libya.

Some experts doubt that the North will ever agree to turn over its weapons, which it considers its main bargaining chip with the West, and Kim’s only insurance policy against being toppled.

— David E Sanger contributed to this report