Nuclear talks end with no disarmament deadline

Arms negotiators today failed to set a firm deadline for North Korea to disable its nuclear facilities following the shutdown of its reactor, only agreeing to more consultations on Pyongyang’s disarmament.

Chinese envoy Wu Dawei said working groups would meet before the end of August to discuss technical details for the North’s next steps: declaring and disabling its nuclear programmes.

Those sessions would be followed by a resumption of talks involving top envoys from all six countries in early September to “work out the roadmap.”.

At the latest round, the North “reiterated that it will earnestly implement its commitments to a complete declaration of all nuclear programmes and disablement of all existing nuclear facilities,” Wu said.

The statement after three days of talks in Beijing failed to include any deadline for the North to actually proceed with those steps, as the US had sought at the start of the talks.

The US insisted earlier today that North Korea could still disable its nuclear facilities by the end of the year, a deadline the main American envoy had hoped would be put in writing this week.

“Ultimately, we decided not to put in deadlines – yet,” US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said. “We’ll put in deadlines when we have the working groups and we know precisely what we’re talking about.”

“There will be continued diplomacy,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said in Washington. “The North Koreans understand that they need to finish the job not only of shutting down the Yongbyon reactor, but also making sure that they put an end to the reprocessing or enrichment of uranium or other fissile materials.

South Korea also sought to put a positive spin on the meeting.

“The biggest achievement of this round of talks is that North Korea clearly stated its position that it has no intention of dragging its feet in carrying out its obligations,” Seoul’s envoy Chun Yung-woo said.

The reactor shutdown was the first step North Korea has taken to scale back its nuclear ambitions since the crisis began in late 2002, when a 1994 disarmament deal fell apart and the North reactivated its reactor to produce plutonium for bombs.

Confirming it could build a weapon, the North conducted its first-ever nuclear test detonation in October.