 | | Nuclear Reactor |
"And they will make their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." On Shabbos Parshas Mishpatim, 5752, the Rebbe spoke about how this prophecy is beginning to be fulfilled, in connection to accords reached between Russia and the U.S., to find peaceful uses for nuclear technology. This prophecy once again shows signs of being fulfilled, with the announcement that North Korea has agreed to drop its nuclear arsenal in exchange for aid. North Korea signed an agreement with six countries, including the United States, Russia, Japan and China.
(Miami Herald) BEIJING - In a turnabout that came suddenly after years of failed talks, North Korea on Monday pledged to scrap its nuclear weapons in exchange for energy, trade and security benefits and steps toward diplomatic relations with the United States and Japan.
North Korea also said it would rejoin a global nonproliferation treaty, and let international inspectors ensure compliance. Around the region, leaders hailed the surprise agreement. South Korea’s leader called it “epoch-making.” A senior Chinese diplomat applauded envoys from six nations for “overcoming one mountain after another, one wall after another.”
“We had a great day today,” said the chief U.S. negotiator, Christopher Hill. “As you all know, it wasn’t easy. But important things often don’t come easily.”
The pledge by North Korea, once condemned by the Bush administration as part of an “axis of evil,” along with Iran and pre-war Iraq, marked an apparent turning point for the Korean Peninsula, which remains divided, heavily militarized and technically in a state of war half a century after it was engulfed in conflict.
In return for dismantling its nuclear programs, energy-starved North Korea won commitments of huge amounts of electricity from South Korea, economic cooperation from other nations and promises from Washington to “exist peacefully” with Pyongyang.
U.S. intelligence officials say North Korea harbors between six and nine nuclear weapons. As recently as last week, the North said it would build more nuclear weapons if other nations did not concede to its demand for a light-water nuclear reactor, worth $2 to $3 billion, to generate electricity. The Bush administration fears Pyongyang might sell one of its nuclear bombs to a terrorist group.
As recently as over the weekend, the talks appeared on the cusp of failure. As the clock ticked by, Hill announced that he would leave for Washington Monday afternoon. Negotiators then reached a breakthrough.
A 17-paragraph “agreement of principles” said that China, Russia, the United States, Japan and South Korea would “discuss at an appropriate time the subject of the provision of light-water reactor” to North Korea, also known as the DPRK.
“What is an appropriate time?” Hill said in a news briefing. “The appropriate time comes when the DPRK gets rid of its nuclear weapons, gets rid of its nuclear programs, comes back into the (Non-proliferation Treaty) and comes back with full (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards.”
The breakthrough marked a major success for China, which has hosted the six-party talks since 2003, in a region that has seen growing tensions and rivalries.
Why North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear programs, after four failed rounds of six-party talks over two years, was not immediately clear.
A throng of journalists and cameramen waited outside the imposing North Korean Embassy in Beijing late Monday, waiting for a news conference that never materialized.
The agreement marked the first time North Korea has signed a document pledging “the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” since 2002, when it admitted to the United States it had broken a 1994 accord to cease development of nuclear weapons.
Acknowledging a secret weapons program, North Korea expelled International Atomic Energy Agency monitors and pulled out of a global nonproliferation regime.
In February, Pyongyang confirmed that it had developed nuclear weapons.
Envoys from China, Russia, Japan, the United States and South Korea, all parties to six-nation talks that began in 2003, signed Monday’s agreement.
In exchange for North Korea agreeing to destroy its nuclear weapons and halt all nuclear programs, the other five nations promised cooperation “in the fields of energy, trade and investment.” The agreement said the United States affirms it “has no nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula” and “has no intention to attack or invade” North Korea.
Both the United States and Japan agreed to “take steps to normalize their relations” with North Korea, but no timetable for diplomatic normalization was announced.
The six countries agreed also to discuss setting up a new multilateral security forum for Northeast Asia, separate from the six-nation talks.
Diplomats said the next round of talks, set for early November, would establish a sequence of phased actions, designed to ensure thorough action by North Korea while rewarding the nation with incentives.
South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young cited his nation’s offer of two million kilowatts of electric power to the North, first made in July, along with Washington’s pledge to normalize relations with Pyongyang as key to the outcome.
Washington’s flexibility in moving “to normalize North Korea-U.S. relations can be viewed as an achievement of the Bush administration,” Chung said in Seoul, according to the state Yonhap news agency.
In Hill’s closing statement to the talks, he reaffirmed Washington’s willingness to establish relations with Pyongyang but also said the United States has “serious concerns” about human rights abuses, biological and chemical weapons development, terrorism, and illicit activities by North Korea’s Stalinist regime.
The U.S. signing of the agreement “should in no way be interpreted as meaning we accept all aspects of the DPRK’s system, human rights situation or treatment of its people. We intend to sit down and make sure that our concerns in these areas are addressed,” Hill said. Since North Korea is entering the agreement voluntarily, Hill said the United States would not push for forceful weapons inspections across the nation.
“We do not plan to go out on the landscape of the DPRK and start hunting for nuclear facilities. We expect those to be shown to us, and we expect to move quickly,” Hill said. “This is absolutely in the DPRK’s interest, the sooner the better, and I think they know that.”
|
No comments:
Post a Comment