North Korea: US has not delivered on aid promises

NORTH KOREA last night said it gave a list of its nuclear programmes to the US in November, claiming it tried to meet commitments under an international disarmament agreement and accusing the US of not doing its part to deliver aid.

North Korea also said because of the delays by the US and other parties to the six-nation talks, it was slowing the pace of disabling its nuclear facilities.

The US disputed North Korea’s claims it handed over the information but still expressed confidence the process was moving ahead.

The foreign ministry did not list the contents of what it gave Washington, but stressed it tried its best to defuse allegations that Pyongyang had a uranium-based nuclear weapons programme.

US officials have voiced scepticism about North Korea’s commitment to a February aid-for-disarmament deal worked out in the talks after Pyongyang failed to meet a year-end deadline on the nuclear declaration. The six nations are the US, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea.

“As far as the nuclear declaration on which wrong opinion is being built up by some quarters is concerned, [North Korea] has done what it should do,” said the foreign ministry.

North Korea accused the US and other parties in the six-nation talks of delays in carrying out their commitments, such as shipping energy aid and removing North Korea from US terrorism and trade blacklists.

That forced Pyongyang to “adjust the tempo of the disablement of some nuclear facilities on the principle of action for action”, it said.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said North Korea has yet to provide a complete nuclear declaration, a key part of a February aid-for-disarmament deal worked out in the six-nation talks.

“It is an important point that in none of this have any of the parties been backing away at all from their commitment to the process,” he said.

Mr McCormack would not discuss North Korea’s claim it had offered an explanation to US officials about its alleged uranium programme.

North Korea’s statement came as the chief US envoy at the disarmament talks, Christopher Hill, headed to Asia to discuss the disarmament accord.

Mr Hill said in December, after visiting North Korea, that he had not seen a draft of the declaration but US and North Korean negotiators had extensive talks about what the US expects to see in the list of nuclear programmes. When asked if North Korea was prepared to present a draft of the declaration, he said his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye Gwan, told him: “We don’t want to rush this and cause problems. ‘Haste makes waste’, I think is what he said.”

North Korea last year promised to abandon its nuclear ambitions in return for about one million tons of oil and political concessions.