The Denuclearization Agreement of February 13, 2007, and Its Implementation

Abstract

Initial Actions for the Implementation of the Joint StatementThe six-nation to shut down North Korea's nuclear facility was reached on February 13, 2007, largely because President George W. Bush was willing to give U.S. negotiators more flexibility to reach an agreement. Ever since the North Korean nuclear crisis erupted in 2002 after the discovery of a secret nuclear program, the Bush administration has insisted that North Korea should not be rewarded for its bad behavior. Furthermore, many U.S. offers have required North Korea to destroy all its nuclear weapons in a complete, verifiable, and irreversible way before substantial rewards are delivered. Pyongyang has insisted that the United States should provide economic assistance and a security guarantee as preconditions before it gradually dismantles its nuclear weapons (Oh and Hassig, 2004, p. 279).This latest pact accepts North Korea's original position-a freeze of its Yongbyon nuclear facility-and requires the United States to move first by unfreezing North Korean bank accounts at Banco Delta Asia. As shown in Table 1, vexing issues such as the dismantlement of the facility and North Korea's stash of weapons-grade plutonium are subject to further negotiations for the next 60 days.Agreements for the next 60 days, from February 13 to mid-April 2007, included shutting down and sealing the Yongbyon nuclear facility, the provision of 50,000 tons of fuel oil, the provision by North Korea of a list of nuclear programs to be covered by the September 19, 2007, statement, and an agreement to hold North Korea-United States bilateral talks and North Korea-Japan bilateral talks on bilateral issues. Five working groups were to be formed to discuss denuclearization of the Korean peninsula; normalization of North Korea-United States relations; normalization of North Korea-Japan relations; economic and energy cooperation, and a Northeast Asia peace and security mechanism. A sixth round of talks were scheduled for March 19, 2007, at which time the working groups would report on their work and the next steps will be discussed (www.ncno.org, February 15, 2007).Under the agreement, South Korea, Russia, China, and the United States would provide the first part of the aid, 50,000 tons of fuel oil or an equivalent value of economic aid; for the United States, that would require congressional approval, which is likely to be difficult to get. If North Korea disables the reactor and abandons all nuclear programs, it will eventually receive another 950,000 tons of fuel oil or an equivalent value of economic aid. As a result, some conservative politicians have denounced the accord. For example, John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said, It is a bad deal for two reasons. First, it contradicts the fundamental premises of the policy that President Bush has followed since the beginning of his administration. Second, it makes the Bush administration look very weak at a time when U.S. troops are in Iraq and when the United States needs to look strong in dealing with Iran. According to critics, if there were no Banco Delta Asia, which holds $25 million in North Korean accounts, the new agreement would contain exactly the same things that North Korea sought in its negotiations with the United States during the first nuclear crisis in the early 1990s, which resulted in the now-scrapped Agreed Framework (Kessler, 2007).Reasons for the Denuclearization AgreementAccording to U.S. think tanks and policy analysts, the United States has four options in dealing with a nuclear North Korea (Bray, 2003):1. Give economic aid and security assurance if North Korea dismantles its nuclear program.2. Use a military strike against the North Korean nuclear facilities.3. Let North Korea develop nuclear weapons.4. Starve the North Korean regime of money.We will describe some details of these four options below. First, the United States could hand out economic aid and security assurance if North Korea dismantles its nuclear program. …