North Korea agrees moratorium on nuclear missile tests

“Today’s announcement represents a modest first step in the right
direction. We, of course, will be watching closely and judging North Korea’s
new leaders by their actions.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose inspectors were expelled
by the North in 2002 and 2009, said it was ready and waiting to begin
verification visits again.

“Pending further details, we stand ready to return to Yongbyon to
undertake monitoring activities upon request and with the agreement of the
agency’s Board of Governors,” the IAEA said in a statement.

Announcing the details of the deal simultaneously with Washington, the
official North Korean news agency said that it was offering the concessions “with
a view to maintaining positive atmosphere” for the Six Party
disarmament talks which have been frozen since 2009.

North Korea has been reeling under economic sanctions since it conducted a
second nuclear test in 2009, which was followed by a series of belligerent
actions against South Korea, including the shelling marine base and the
torpedoing a warship, the Cheonan.

In return for reopening its nuclear facilities for inspection, North Korea is
to receive 240,000 tonnes of food aid and assurances from the US that it
would discuss the lifting of sanctions and the possible provision of
light-water reactors to generate electricity.

The joint announcement, which caught many analysts off guard, came after three
meetings between Washington and Pyongyang over the last eight months, the
most recent of which took place in Beijing last week.

However at the time Glyn Davies, the US special representative for North Korea
policy, said only that a “little bit of progress” had been made,
but that the tone and substance of the talks remained similar to those of
the Kim Jong-il era.

At the end of the second day, he said: “I think the word ‘breakthrough’
goes way too far, folks. I wouldn’t want anybody using the word
‘breakthrough’.”

North Korea was said to have demanded 300,000 tonnes of food aid during the
talks, raising speculation that the new leadership was desperate for
supplies to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the
North’s original dictator, on April 15.

North Korea specialises in staging propaganda showpieces and has been gearing
up for a mammoth celebration of the event which is also supposed to mark the
point when North Korea becomes a ‘prosperous’ nation.

A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman added that the IAEA inspections, the
moratoria on nuclear tests, long-range missile launches, and uranium
enrichment at its Yongbyon plant would be allowed “while productive
dialogues continue”.

Such caveats from the North’s negotiators ultimately led to the breakdown of
similar aid-for-denuclearisation deals in 2002 and 2008, leaving many
analysts remaining sceptical that a fresh round of talks would yield a
significantly different outcome.

“It seems as if the game of cat and mouse has started again,” said
Aidan Foster Carter, a North Korea expert at Leeds University, “this is
a start, but we must wait and see what actually happens, whether the IAEA
inspectors are really allowed in, and what they are able to see”.

The Obama administration, which until now has pledged it would not repeat the
mistakes of the George W. Bush era and re-enter negotiations with the North,
has opened itself to criticism that it has fallen into exactly that trap.

“There are doubters who will say ‘we’ve already bought this horse twice
and failed, why buy it for a third time,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, Korea
expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“My understanding is that the administration hopes that this process
could at least slow down North Korea’s nuclear development, which is better
than nothing, even if almost everyone agrees that hopes of North Korea
actually denuclearising have now all but evaporated.”

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