China Tasks N’Korea On Nuclear Inspection

China recently, urged North Korea to accept international nuclear monitors, as the country itself had suggested, amid a tense standoff with the South.

China, North Korea’s only major ally, has continually urged dialogue to resolve the crisis and has been reluctant to blame the country for the shelling of a South Korean island last month, in which two Marines and two civilians were killed.

South Korea held further live-fire drills on the island last Monday, raising fear of all-out war, but the North did not retaliate. Instead, if offered to accept nuclear inspectors it has kicked out of the country before.

North Korea has the right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, but also at he same time must allow IAEA (Intentional Atomic Energy Agency) inspectors in

All parties should realise that artillery fire and military force cannot solve the issues on the peninsula, and dialogue and cooperation are the only correct approaches,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu said in Beijing when asked about North Korea’s offer. 

North Korea promised to allow inspectors to make sure it is not processing highly enriched uranium, New Mexico Governor, Bill Richardson said on his return from a trouble-shooting visit to Pyongyang.

He told reporters that North Korea had shown a “pragmatic attitude” in his unofficial talks.

The specifics are that they will allow IAEA personnel to go to Youngbyon to ensure that they are not processing highly enriched uranium, that they are proceeding with peaceful purposes,” Richardon said, referring to the North’s main nuclear site.

Anderi Lankov at Kookmin University in Seoul said the North’s offer was a “usual tactic” that had worked in the past. They create a crisis, they show that they are dangerous and drive tensions high. Then they show they could make some concessions. The question that remains is whether this is the only facility. A uranium enrichment programme is much easier to hide than a plutonium one, he said. If IAFA inspectors were allowed to carry out such monitoring, it could help to address a key concern about North Korea’s uranium enrichment work because highly enriched material can be used in atomic weapons.

The Yongbyon complex is at the heart of the North’s plutonium weapons programme and it consists of a five-megawatt reactor, whose construction began in 1980, a fuel fabrication facility and a plutonium reprocessing plant, where weapons-grade material is extracted from spent fuel rods.

A uranium enrichment programme would give Pyongyanga a second way to obtain fissile material for making atomic bombs.

North Korea, which has refused full IAEA oversight since 2002 and expelled inspectors last April, has said it only wants to enrich uranium to the low level used to make fuel for a civilian atomic power programme.

But in order to check this, the IAEA would need continued, unfettered access to all of North Korea’s uranium enrichment activities.  

It would usually require frequent inspections, video cameras and special seals tonsure that none of the nuclear material is being diverted for military use.

South Korea and the U.S. suspect North Korea has been secretly enriching uranium at new locations outside Yongbyon.

Richardson said of the North’s offer: “I believe that’s an important gesture on their part, but there still has to be a commitment eventually by the North Koreans to denuclearize, to abide by the 2005 agreement that says they will terminate their nuclear weapons activities.

“Now there has to be deeds and not words. But it’s up to governments to move forward with the agreements that we’ve made, and it’s time for citizen-diplomats like myself to step aside and let governments move forward,” he said. He told CNN the offer might pave the way for the resumption of six-party talks which also involve the U.S. Russia, Japan, China and South Korea, although Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have been cool to this idea, reluctant to reward perceived bad behaviour.

“Maybe now is the time for the six-party countries to reach out to North Korean and say, ok, let’s get down to business,” Richard said on CNN.

A key South Korean government official said the recent aggression by the North was closely linked to the succession from ailing leader Kim Jong-il to his youngest son, Kim Jong-il to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, and was intended for its domestic audience as much as far anybody.

We don’t want to give them the misperception that their provocations  will help their national interest,” he said.

The UN Security Council remained deadlocked in its efforts to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula, but North Korea’s refraining from retaliation and the nuclear offer made to U.S. trouble-shooter Richardson offered some breathing space.

But the South Korean government official, who declined to be identified, said Seoul could not take the North Korean offer seriously as it was not official.

He said the five parties had to agree first on what to offer he North.

Then we can pursue six-party talks. But the next six-party talks will be the grand bargain. That means a target year (for dismantlement) and the whole picture in the next round, not partial elements,” he said.