North Korea makes fuel oil demands

NORTH Korea’s top nuclear envoy has told former US officials that Pyongyang wants more than half a million tonnes of fuel oil a year in return for suspending its atomic reactor, a Japanese daily said yesterday.

Shutting down North Korea’s sole operating reactor is expected to be a key negotiating point when six-country discussions on ending the North’s nuclear weapons programme resume in Beijing on Thursday, analysts said.

The Asahi Shimbun said North Korean vice foreign minister Kim Kye-gwan had set out Pyongyang’s position when he met former US State Department official Joel Witt and nuclear expert David Albright in the North Korean capital last week.

The demand would exceed the energy assistance received by the impoverished communist state under a 1994 deal with Washington, which collapsed when the current nuclear crisis began in 2002.

Kim and other North Korean officials said the country would halt the operation of its reactor at Yongbyon if it obtained energy assistance equivalent to more than 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil a year, the Asahi said, quoting the two Americans.

North Korean officials also demanded that Washington lift its financial sanctions against the country as well as removing North Korea from the list of “terrorism-sponsoring” nations.

Kim was likely to have made the demands to US counterpart Christopher Hill at unprecedented meetings the two men held in Berlin last month, but might have decided to reiterate them to seek concessions when the six-party talks resume, Asahi said.

Mr Hill said he had not seen the reports on the oil aid, but he wanted to see tangible steps at the Beijing talks to start North Korea on the path toward ending its atomic ambitions.

“The ultimate task for us is to complete denuclearisation, not just to begin denuclearisation,” Mr Hill told reporters before a dinner meeting with South Korea’s foreign minister and chief envoy to the six-way talks.

Pyongyang typically publishes demands in its official media before sessions of the talks between the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, but it has not done so ahead of this week’s session.

However, it did fire a verbal shot at Washington yesterday.

“The US tramples down other countries by military force as they have differing ideology and system and do not obey it,” its KCNA news agency reported.