U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2008)

U.S. Department of State

Daily Press Briefing

Tom Casey, Deputy Spokesman
Washington, DC
June 26, 2008

12:46 p.m. EDT

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QUESTION: I just wanted to go back to Sylvie's question about the package, so-called. There is an understanding that was reported extensively that the uranium issue and the proliferation issue are going to be addressed in a separate document that was going to be a bilateral acknowledgement of what happened, and not be a part of what was given to the Chinese. Are you saying now that actually that document was part of what was given to the Chinese?

MR. CASEY: So you would like to know if a document I haven't seen contains a secret agreement that --

QUESTION: Well, you said you have a very good idea of what it contains, so --

MR. CASEY: Nicholas, my understanding is the document that has been provided to the Chinese, the declaration that's been the Chinese, is the full and -- full declaration that the North Koreans intend to provide, including, you know, whether it's, you know, a ten-page summary with 27 chapters and 15 annexes, or otherwise. But, you know, all the information that is relevant to this process that has been provided by the North Koreans is, I understand, in what they handed over to the Chinese.

QUESTION: And you do not expect any addendums or appendixes or anything that will be provided only to the U.S. bilaterally?

MR. CASEY: Based on my thimbleful of knowledge on this subject? No.

Kirit.

QUESTION: Just so we can go back to verification real quick --

MR. CASEY: Yeah.

QUESTION: If you could kind of go through what the North has agreed upon as far as who will be able to go into the country and that kind of thing, and then when this might start.

MR. CASEY: Well, I guess one thing you could -- one way of looking at this is that verification began a while ago. It began when U.S. and Russian and Chinese and other officials began working at Yongbyon on disablement and being able to view the activities there and verify what was going on there. It continued when Sung Kim went to North Korea and received the 18,000 pages of material related to plutonium production that he received and that we're using, in part, now, to be able to verify the amounts of plutonium produced. And, you know, it will continue from there.

As the Secretary's spoken to on this subject, we are looking at a variety of things that would allow us to be able to adequately verify the information involved. And that does involve things like physical inspections of facilities, waste pools, and other kinds of places. It involves being able to interview individuals who have worked on these various programs over time. It certainly involves other kinds of on-site inspections, sampling of materials or of soils, as appropriate, all to be able to make sure that what is in the declaration is true and accurate, and also to respond to and answer any of the other outstanding questions that the declaration might leave open.

So again, I don't think anyone has tried to put any particular limitations or descriptors on who that would be. What we are looking for and what we expect out of the North Koreans is an ability to go where we need to go and see who we need to see to be able to respond to those questions. And as I said before, in some cases that may involve a expert on nuclear reactor technology from the Department of Energy going somewhere. In other cases, it may involve having individuals interviewed by those who have some expertise on proliferation concerns. We'll just have to see. Again, I think there'll be a fairly steady stream of people involved in this and moving forward in North Korea as well as elsewhere to try and answer all those questions.

QUESTION: When Rice spoke about that last week, she said that more in the abstract, that this is what they would like to see. Has North Korea actually agreed to allow those things to take place?

MR. CASEY: There's an agreement in principle on these verification methods. What -- you know, what you are asking me I thought was more of a, have they, you know, agreed to a list of individuals or kinds of individuals. But it's basically a principle -- a matter of principles, and the principles include being able to do on-site inspections and sampling and interviews and those kinds of things.

QUESTION: And just one other point -- when do you expect the Chinese to actually hand out the declaration? Is that going to happen tomorrow?

MR. CASEY: I honestly don't know, and then, of course, we're in a situation where we've got a lot of people in various places outside of Washington, too. I expect we'll have it shortly, but I couldn't tell you, you know, when it would get here versus when it might get to the Secretary and Chris out in Japan...

Yeah.

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QUESTION: When do you anticipate the Secretary will meet with the North Koreans in a six-party format?

MR. CASEY: Well, first of all, I know we're waiting to see what the Chinese will do in terms of another heads of delegation meeting or another working level session, if you will, the six-party talks. Certainly, there's possibility for a ministerial-level six-party session at some point in the future. I wouldn't try and predict timing for you on that. If that's also a way of asking does she intend to go to North Korea on this trip or at any point in the future, there's certainly no plans to do so.

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QUESTION: You've obviously dealt very differently with North Korea from what you've done with Iraq. But is -- was it -- I'm trying to figure out whether this was sort of a conscious, consistent policy of trying to neutralize these threats one by one, the three of them, and that with North Korea's removal from the terrorist list, that now, indeed, two of these threats have been, if not completely neutralized, at least reduced.

MR. CASEY: Well, I -- first of all, I'll -- you know, I'll let the President talk about his own words and statements, and my colleagues at the White House can kind of try and give you a read on that.

What I would say is it's certainly true that these are problems of longstanding, whether it was Iraq or Iran or North Korea. And we've certainly done what we could to be able to address those problems and pleased to see, in this instance, that we've had some, you know, positive steps taken place with North Korea. We'd like to see similar positive steps occur with Iran. But one of the things I think you can draw from this, though, is the fact that this Administration has worked consistently to build a international coalition, a group of countries who are best positioned to be able to use their influence and use the powers that they may be able to bring to bear to bring about a change in behavior.

One of the things that I think you've heard from the Secretary about quite frequently is the importance of having talks based on some rational expectation that they might lead to something. And to do that, you need to be able to have some form of leverage, some form of ability to influence the behavior of those you're talking to. And I think one of the real positive examples that comes out of the six-party process is that when we did work in concert with China, with Russia, Japan and South Korea, we were able to use the collective influence of all those countries to bring about a change in behavior.

And again, I'm not trying to say that this is the end of the road or that we'll easily get to a fully denuclearized Korean Peninsula. But I think, to the extent that we have made the progress that we have, it's due to the ability of this group here, of the Secretary, and others at the White House and the President, to be able to build this strong group of international countries who are willing and able to work in concert with us to be able to bring about a change in a regime that has shown a great reluctance to do so over time.

Yeah, ma'am.

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(The briefing was concluded at 1:23 p.m.)