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

U.S. Department of State

Special Briefing

Sean McCormack, Spokesman
Washington, DC
October 11, 2008

On the Record Briefing: Special Envoy for the Six-Party Talks Ambassador Sung Kim, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Sean McCormack, Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation Paula DeSutter, and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation Patricia McNerney on North Korea

2008/869

MR. MCCORMACK: Good morning, everybody. I want to thank you for coming in on a Saturday morning. I see a few faces that we don't normally see in the briefing room.

You have a couple of pieces of paper in front of you. One of them is a fact sheet that I'm going to read here just for the record. You also have in front of you a fact sheet called Existing Sanctions and Reporting Provisions Related to North Korea. I think that's a useful reference for part of our discussion a little bit later on. So let me get started here. I'm going to read a couple of statements which we'll have in paper form for you, and we're also going to invite a couple of other guest speakers up here: Ambassador Sung Kim from the EAP Bureau, Acting Assistant Secretary Patty McNerney, Assistant Secretary Paula DeSutter. They're going to make brief statements and then we can get into a Q&A session and talk about this morning's events.

The participants in the Six-Party Talks have, for some time, been discussing the importance of verification measures that will allow the parties to reliably verify North Korea's denuclearization as the process moves forward. The Six-Party heads of delegation met in July to discuss verification measures and draft papers were exchanged among the parties. On July 12th, China, the chair of the Six-Party Talks, released a press communiqué stating that verification measures would include visits to facilities, review of documents, and interviews with technical personnel as well as other measures unanimously agreed among the Six Parties.

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QUESTION: Well, you addressed – I just want to ask that you – the one line where you said – talked about the verification protocol to be finalized and adopted by the Six Parties in the near future, maybe Ambassador Kim could speak with – but when exactly in the near future?

MR. MCCORMACK: In the near future. I think Sung Kim can speak to that.

QUESTION: Okay.

AMBASSADOR KIM: Thanks. Thanks, Sean. Good morning. I think Sean covered most of the important points, but I thought I'd give you some negotiating history so that you have a better sense of how this – how we arrived at the agreement.

As Sean mentioned, the Six Parties have been pursuing strong verification measures to reliably verify the North Korean declaration for some time now. We have continued to conduct very intensive consultations with all of our five party partners in addition to our discussions with the North Koreans. In fact, verification activities really began even before the declaration was submitted in June. In early May, as you may recall, the North Koreans gave us 18,000 pages of documents related to their Yongbyon facilities. An analysis of those documents have given us some useful information.

In conjunction with the submission of the declaration on June 26th, the China – the Chinese, as the chair of the Six-Party process, announced that the parties agreed that that declaration would be subject to full verification and that there is an agreement within the Six Parties on principles to guide the verification regime. This was further refined during the July 10-12 Six Party heads of delegation meeting as well as the denuclearization working group meeting. And I think Sean mentioned the press communiqué that the Chinese issued as a result of those discussions.

We continue to have follow-up discussions with all of the parties throughout, including on the margins of the informal Six-Party ministerial meeting in Singapore on July 23rd. After further discussion with the parties, on twenty – August 22nd, a revised draft verification paper was circulated. We did not receive any substantive response from the North Koreans, but they did invite a U.S. delegation led by Assistant Secretary Hill to visit North Korea last week.

And during that visit, we had detailed and substantive discussions on a set of verification measures. And as Sean mentioned, we reached agreement on these verification measures. Now these measures will have to be codified in the Six-Party process. As Secretary Rice likes to say, we need to "Six-Partyize" this bilateral agreement, and that is our – that is the next step. You asked about the timing of the Six-Party meeting. We have been talking to the Chinese, and I think the Chinese would like to call a meeting as soon as possible, possibly within this month, to finalize and adopt this verification package.

I just want to mention again that we have continued to have very intensive consultations with all of our parties, especially Japan. In fact, just a couple of days ago, an NSC colleague and I were in Tokyo and met with Japanese counterparts for four to five hours going through details of the agreement that we had reached with the North Koreans. And there have been several senior-level communication with Japanese leaders as well.

I also want to mention – remind you a couple – of other very important points. As Sean just read in the press statement, we welcome the recent progress between Japan and the DPRK to address Japan's concerns, particularly the abductions issue. We strongly urge the North Koreans to implement their agreement as soon as possible. I also want to mention that we remain deeply concerned about the human rights situation in North Korea in general, and that we have made clear to the North Koreans that the human rights situation would be an important concern that needs to be addressed as we move forward towards – in the Six-Party process as well as in improving bilateral relationship. Thanks.

MR. MCCORMACK: What we'll do is we'll have Acting Assistant Secretary McNerney come up and then Assistant Secretary DeSutter. Then we can get into your questions.

MS. MCNERNEY: Good morning. I just wanted to talk a little bit generally about what we've done from the perspective of the International Security and Nonproliferation Bureau in conjunction with my colleague, Paula DeSutter, who can talk to some of the specifics about verification.

We've basically been focused since October 3rd of last year, when Korea agreed it would provide us with a complete and correct declaration of its nuclear programs. In order to assess that completeness and correctness of the declaration that was provided by North Korea, the United States and the Six Parties affirmed that we need to see a robust verification mechanism in order to assess the completeness and correctness. On July 12th, we met in Beijing and the Six Parties – as you know, Sean described – released a communiqué that laid out some of the general elements of such a verification regime.

Verifying North Korea's nuclear declaration will be a serious challenge and we're not going into this naïvely. This is the most secret and opaque regime in the entire world. Secretary Rice outlined, for that reason, some of the elements that we need to see in a declaration. These included – this was her statement of June 18th – and these include on-site access to facilities and sites in North Korea; collection and removal of environmental and material samples; forensic analysis of materials and equipment; access to documents and other records; as well as interviews with North Korean personnel involved in the nuclear program. The agreement that we are discussing today meets all of these criteria.

Since we began the Six-Party process, we've learned more than we knew about North Korea's nuclear program. As Sung mentioned, our experts have had the opportunity to review 18,000 pages of operating records from the Yongbyon facility. We know that North Korea has pursued a uranium enrichment –we assess that they pursued one in the past. And as we've gotten deeper into the process, we've been troubled by additional information about its uranium enrichment capability.

We've been engaged in these negotiations on behalf of the Six Parties for the past several months in order to develop such a regime, as outlined by the Secretary. This agreement and associated understandings are now being reviewed by the Six Parties and we believe will serve as a baseline for a formalized verification protocol that would be discussed in the coming weeks. Once agreed by the Six Parties, we believe we will have a solid basis for undertaking a robust verification regime. This will be a lengthy process, however, and progress will depend on the North Korean cooperation.

I'd also like to just highlight the fact sheet, again, on the existing sanctions. North Korea will still remain one of the most sanctioned countries in the world in terms of U.S. law. In fact, all exports by the United States remain subject to licensing by the Commerce Department, as well as many prohibitions from the missile standpoint, the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons standpoint. And so the lifting today certainly does not remove at all the leverage that we will maintain as we move forward in this process. Thank you.

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QUESTION: Can I follow up here? Let me just ask two good – before people get into specifics, and I'm sure they will, I just want to ask two pretty broad questions. One is, what gives you confidence that the North Koreans are actually going to agree to the protocol? Has this – have these – has this agreement, that codified agreement that you reached with the North Koreans, and the related other understandings, has that been deposited with the Chinese? Are they willing – do you have confidence that, in fact, the protocol will actually be done?

And then secondly, do you have a commitment from the North Koreans that now that the rescission has taken place, that they will stop what they are doing at Yongbyon in terms of moving to restart it and, in fact, again begin to revert to a disablement plan?

MR. MCCORMACK: Let me answer very generally and then I can turn to Ambassador Kim.

On the first of those, this is an agreement. The United States was, if you will, point person for the other four parties in negotiating this. But the key principle of the Six-Party Talks is that any agreement must be agreed upon and, in essence, guaranteed by all the parties. So it's no longer just a bilateral agreement; the stage we are at is a bilateral agreement between the United States and North Korea. The next step is to go to the Six and have this formalized, and then the step after that, should all agree, is to have it implemented. Then the – in terms of the North Korean actions, they – the statement that I read, they have agreed that they are going to immediately start completing work on their disablement actions.

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