N Korea - Trouble Brewing?
Email from: J. Adams, November 16, 1996
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Looks like trouble is brewing. Please keep me updated as events warrant and I will do the same for you from my own sources. (Friday November 15 8:49 AM EST)
N.Korea Says Nuke Deal With U.S. in Jeopardy
TOKYO (Reuters) -- North Korea said Friday it can no longer keep its nuclear program "frozen" under a 1994 agreement with the United States, signaling a brewing new crisis on the tense Korean Peninsula.
Pyongyang's official Korean News Agency (KCNA) bitterly accused Washington of dragging its feet on implementing an accord that Washington hoped would head off any North Korean plans to develop nuclear weapons.
"We cannot keep the nuclear program frozen any longer only to get heavy oil, the shipments of which may be suspended any time, with no importance given to when light water reactors will be provided," KCNA said in a report monitored in Tokyo.
"The framework agreement, which was concluded by sincere efforts of the DPRK (North Korea) and the United States two years ago, marking an epoch-making occasion in ensuring peace in the (Korean) peninsula, has now been (put) at stake," Pyongyang's mouthpi ece KCNA said.
It was the second stark warning given to the United States this week by the reclusive communist state. On Monday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry also accused Washington of backing away from four-way peace talks, including China, proposed by President C linton and South Korean President Kim Young-sam in April.
"If the U.S. is interested in the implementation of the bilateral agreement even a little bit, it must take a reasonable view of the present situation and have a responsible position," KCNA said in its latest broadside. "Now we do not feel it necessary to continue wasting time since the U.S. has unilaterally delayed the implementation of the agreement, breaking its promise," it said.
After lengthy talks with the United States, North Korea agreed in October 1994 to freeze a nuclear program Washington suspects was being used to develop nuclear weapons. In return the United States agreed to arrange the provision of power-generating ligh t-water nuclear reactors that produce less weapons-grade plutonium.
"The DPRK's nuclear power development is an important sector of strategic significance in its planned socialist economic construction. What is vital to this sector is time," KCNA said. "The DPRK has paid so much for the honest implementation of the agree ment, freezing the peaceful nuclear program for a long time," it added.
In Seoul last month, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord said Washington and Seoul would press ahead with the agreement. But without referring directly to a recent submarine incursion by North Korea, he told a news conference there would be "a pause in the pace of our activities."
Tension has remained high on the divided Korean Peninsula, the world's last Cold War frontier, since a submarine landed 26 North Koreans in September off South Korea's eastern city of Kangnung. Twenty-three of the intruders have been shot dead, and the r est have either been captured or are missing.
North Korea has warned the U.S. that their nuclear pact could be jeopardized by Washington's stand on the submarine incident. Seoul, which had pledged to foot most of the $5 billion cost of building nuclear plants for the communist state, has hinted it m ight withdraw its backing for the nuclear accord because of incidents like the submarine one.
