Nuclear diplomacy -- Part 2

MOSCOW, July 9 (UPI) -- As a symbolic gesture, North Korea on June 27 blew up the cooling tower of its main atomic reactor at Yongbyon -- 60 miles to the north of the capital, Pyongyang. This process was shown live by major world TV channels.

The United States will start the process of removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and lifting trade and financial restrictions in the near future. It will take 45 days to complete this process.

Analysts believe this will give North Korea big opportunities in foreign trade, and help it break long-term international isolation.

However, it will take a long time to finally resolve the long-running nuclear proliferation crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

The participants in the six-sided talks between North Korea, the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea are resuming the discussion of a third stage in North Korea's nuclear disarmament -- the irreversible and verified cessation of all nuclear programs by the Pyongyang government and the complete normalization of North Korea's relations with the United States and Japan.

The first nuclear crisis broke on the peninsula in the early 1990s, when North Korea had just started developing nuclear weapons at Yongbyon. This was a brinkmanship situation, but in 1994 U.S. and North Korean diplomats came to a compromise: North Korea agreed to freeze its Yongbyon facility in exchange for the supply of two light-water reactors, which were inadequate for the production of weapons-grade plutonium.

Having come to power in the United States in 2001, President George W. Bush rejected his predecessor President Bill Clinton's policy on North Korea. The construction of light-water reactors was stopped, and North Korea resumed development of nuclear weapons.

The six-sided talks, which started in the Chinese capital, Beijing, in August 2003, were rather sluggish until North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion. The participants in the talks were shaken up and got matters off the ground. North Korea promised to give up nuclear weapons if threats to its security were removed. It did not want to become a second Iraq.

Strange as it may seem, it appears that in order to get into the graces of the United States, have the economic sanctions against it lifted and be removed from the blacklist, North Korea had to develop nuclear weapons. The North Korean government is well aware that if it had not gone nuclear, the United States would have refused even to talk with it.

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(Ivan Zakharchenko is an international commentator for RIA Novosti. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.)

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