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North Korea Back in Six-Party Talks
Six-party talks on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program will resume on February 8 in Beijing, a North Korean official said Tuesday. The move came after North Korea and the United States showed they were willing to meet each other halfway.
Berlin hosted talks between U.S and North Korean deputy foreign policy chiefs in mid-January. Unofficial sources report that the North Koreans agreed to stop a nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, which can produce military plutonium, and open doors for international inspectors. In return, the United States promised Pyongyang economic and energy aid and said they were willing to de-freeze North Korea’s $24 million accounts in the Delta Asia bank in Macao. These financial restrictions were cited as a reason for the communist country to walk out of the six-party discussion in fall 2005.
As a matter of fact, Pyongyang will not lose anything from the pledge to scrap its nuclear program. Over the past four years of the nuclear reactor’s work, the country has already produced enough plutonium to use in five or seven nuclear war-heads, experts estimated. What is more, the North Koreans will be able to push the reactor back into operation at any moment should the situation take a bad turn for them.
Still, the parties sound upbeat. Chinese Foreign Minister Song Min Soon and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday they would keep North Korea to agreements which followed the fourth round of the six-party talks. In a September 2005 pact Pyongyang pledged to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and security guarantees.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Jan. 31, 2007
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