At six-nation talks, North Korea agrees to relinquish nuclear activities in return for aid, writes Gamal Nkrumah On Monday, North Korea's ruling Workers Party celebrated its 60th anniversary. Week-long celebrations take place at a most opportune moment. For in a surprise move last week, North Korea reluctantly agreed to accept a draft proposal by the United States to renounce its nuclear programme at six-nation talks in the Chinese capital Beijing. North Korea -- officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) -- pledged to relinquish its nuclear activities through a two-stage process, and has also conceded to a prolonged verification period. Pyongyang, the DPRK capital, has in the past flatly rejected the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board's request for greater transparency including inspector access to nuclear facilities. "North Korea, I think, has been seeking a dialogue with the United States and with the rest of the international community through their usual policy of nuclear blackmail, nuclear brinkmanship, to force the other parties to engage them," explained Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the head of the Vienna-based IAEA Mohamed El-Baradei. The IAEA, and its head El-Baradei, played an instrumental role in facilitating the inspection of North Korea's uranium enrichment and plutonium-based nuclear facilities. To persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal has long been El-Baradei's most ambitious agenda. The involvement of the IAEA in the decommissioning verification process is deemed essential. As the UN's chief nuclear inspector, distrustful hosts coolly received El-Baradei's visit to North Korea. Indeed, there was no love lost between El-Baradei and the North Koreans. Pyongyang sees El-Baradei as little more than a US stooge. It argues that the US and not North Korea is to blame for the nuclear confrontation. Indeed, many Western and Asian diplomats at the UN are privately expressing concern about Washington's handling of the Korean nuclear dispute. Pyongyang's official news agency, known by its English acronym KCNA, called US President George W Bush "an imbecile" and a "tyrant who puts Hitler in the shade". The Bush administration, in turn, unleashed a fierce attack on Pyongyang and its iron-fisted strongman Kim Jong-Il. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently identified North Korea as one of six "outposts of tyranny" in the world. The Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is branded a dangerous ideologue bent on ruining his nation. As far as Washington is concerned there is nothing that Kim Jong-Il can do to assuage fears that Pyongyang will eventually break any nuclear agreement other than to step down. Kim Jong-Il usurped power in 1994, succeeding his father Kim Il- Sung. No official successor has been chosen, even though -- adhering to the hereditary principle of power -- the naming of one of Kim Jong-Il's three sons as the next in line is widely expected to take place shortly. Attending Workers Party celebrations was Megawati Sukarnoputri, former Indonesian president and daughter of Sukarno, the island nation's founding father and friend of Kim Il- Sung. China's Vice Premier Wu Yi also paid a visit to Pyongyang. Wu, the People's Republic highest-ranking woman official, is a veteran diplomat skilled in difficult negotiations. Few other foreign dignitaries participated in the 60th anniversary. Celebrations and negotiations take place against a grave humanitarian situation that explains in part the new line Pyongyang has adopted, albeit reluctantly. Famine has killed an estimated two million people in North Korea. The Rome-based World Food Programme has been feeding an average of 6.5 million North Koreans every year. North Korea has long relied heavily on food handouts from wealthier countries, especially South Korea and China, North Korea's largest aid donor. Pyongyang is trying to improve its public distribution and food rationing system. Many suspect that Pyongyang softened its attitude toward the nuclear crisis in the hope that it will receive more maize and rice and other cereals donated by South Korea and other nations. South Korea pledged to provide 500,000 tonnes of fertiliser to the North. In spite of the tentative nuclear agreement, Pyongyang remains ambiguous on the detail. China and Russia, meanwhile -- two close political allies and economic partners of North Korea -- have advised Pyongyang to keep its powder dry for a far more important battle: Korean unification plans. Apologists for Kim Jong-Il stress that it is not his fault that the political will for reform is still lacking in North Korea. Facing an escalation in the international dispute over North Korea's nuclear programme, they suggest Pyongyang should not worry unduly about growing US pressure for the DPRK to discard its nuclear arsenal and institute democratic change. Pyongyang, however, wants security guarantees and diplomatic recognition. Pyongyang's confidence comes partly from the country's resilience against Western sanctions despite being buoyed by South Korean aid and Chinese economic assistance. There are plenty of potential benefits for the North Koreans if the nuclear crisis is resolved. El-Baradei staved off Pyongyang's plans for detonating a nuclear device, but Washington's approach toward North Korea smacks of the high-handed attitude often taken by the Bush administration towards states it considers "rogue". Congress has expressed scepticism over the tentative nuclear deal. US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill, however, is upbeat. "The key outcome of the last round of six-party talks is clear, unambiguous and endorsed by all parties to the talks: it is the DPRK commitment to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes and to [accede to] NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) and to IAEA safeguards," declared Hill to the House International Relations Committee on Friday. "We need to take the momentum of this agreement and work to see that it is implemented," he said. The North Korean nuclear dispute began in 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of secretly developing a uranium- based nuclear arms programme, thereby contravening international agreements. Pyongyang angrily withdrew from the NPT in 2003 and abruptly halted all cooperation with the IAEA. The crisis took a turn for the worse when North Korea announced in September 2004 that it has turned plutonium from 8,000 spent fuel rods into nuclear weapons. In retrospect, it was a smart move by Pyongyang. A turning point came when former US Secretary of State Colin Powell met North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-Sun at an Asia- Pacific security forum in Indonesia. Powell and Paek, in a groundbreaking 15-minute meeting, discussed the impasse in the six-nation talks. By January 2005, North Korea reluctantly agreed to restart the stalled six-nation talks. Pyongyang declared that it "would not stand against the US but respect and treat it as a friend" so long as the US refrained from "slandering" the North Korean political system and "interfering in its internal affairs". South Korean authorities then announced that Pyongyang was willing to allow US nuclear scientists to inspect the plutonium facility in Yongbyon. A week later, an unofficial US team visited what the North Koreans call the "nuclear deterrent" facility. US scientist Siegfried Hecker told Congress that delegates visiting Yongbyon found weapons-grade plutonium, but no evidence of a nuclear bomb. "We knew they had the industrial infrastructure to make weapons from this plutonium," El-Baradei said earlier this year. From then, matters moved at a relatively faster pace. In February 2005, a second round of six-nation nuclear talks in Beijing ended without a breakthrough. North Korea and South Korea held talks in May 2005, but once again the talks ended in failure. The third round of talks was held in Beijing in June and the US offered to allow North Korea fuel aid only if it freezes and dismantles its nuclear facilities. Then on 13 September the six-nations talks resumed in Beijing and on 19 September it was announced that North Korea agreed to give up all its nuclear activities and rejoin the NPT. Few, however, were waiting for a breakthrough with bated breath. This scenario has been repeated before. As far back as 1994, similar talks with a similar breakthrough came to naught. There also remains the legitimate question as to whether North Korea can be permitted to develop peaceful nuclear facilities. Both Washington and El-Baradei say that they will not give in to the incessant intimidation and sloganeering of Kim Jong-Il and his regime. The DPRK has now agreed to readmit inspectors from the IAEA, but it is plagued by endemic problems that may be used as bargaining chips. Pyongyang's demands for nuclear reactors are making some Western nations and Japan uneasy. They demand to know who will guarantee Pyongyang's pledges. Amid much politicking and political manoeuvering, a final solution to the Korean nuclear crisis must be found. The problem for the US administration is that in final solutions to international conflicts rarely does one party alone take all the spoils.
