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Six-party deal under threat
as US spills beans on NKorea
Washington — US claims that North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear
reactor may wreck a six-party deal under which the hardline
communist state agreed to end its nuclear weapons drive, experts
said.
Although Washington has made clear that the diplomatic initiative
will continue, the serious accusation levelled against North Korea
would require President George W. Bush’s administration to impose
such high verification standards on denuclearization efforts that
Pyongyang may just walk away from the deal, according to the
experts.
“I suspect what will happen is they will hold the North Koreans to a
very high verification standard because they realize what a hard
sell this is to Congress and that the North Koreans probably won’t
be able to do,” said Michael Green, a top Asia hand in the first
Bush administration. “We can’t simply say that it won’t happen again
and that’s good enough, because the North Koreans have violated some
significant proliferation red lines, and if there isn’t some
consequence for that, they are likely to do it again,” he said.
Japan warned Friday that the US allegations, if proven, would be a
blow to the stalled deal on ending the communist state’s nuclear
driv “If North Korea supported Syria’s nuclear activities, it would
be a big problem,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said
in Tokyo.
“It is extremely regrettable” if North Korea transferred nuclear
technology to Syria, Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said
separately.
The six-nation talks group the United States, the two Koreas, China,
Japan and Russia.
Chief US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill said the allegations
were just one more issue to be addressed by the group.
“It is the judgment of the United States that there is not an
ongoing cooperation with Syria in this area,” Hill told reporters in
New Haven, Connecticut Thursday, according to footage broadcast in
Japan.“We will deal with this issue as we do with many other issues
in the six parties.”
Lawmakers were fuming Thursday when White House and CIA officials
briefed key Congressional panels, seven months after the Syrian
nuclear reactor was effectively destroyed in September by a
mysterious Israeli air strike.
“If they do reach some kind of an agreement with the six-party
talks, it will be much harder for them to go through the Congress
and get these agreements approved,” said Pete Hoekstra, the top
Republican on the House of Representatives intelligence committee.—AFP
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