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By Root 1761 0

result of three days of intense bargaining was by far the most important document adopted by the two sides since the NorthSouth joint statement of July 4, 1972. In the "Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression and Exchanges and Cooperation between the South and the North," adopted and initialed on December 13, 1991, the two Koreas came closer than ever before to accepting each other's regime as a legitimate government with a right to exist. The document portrayed the two Koreas as "recognizing that their relations, not being a relationship between states, constitute a special interim relationship stemming from the process toward unification." The guidelines of the "special interim relationship," if implemented, would have meant a nearly complete cessation of the conflict on the peninsula and a reversal of decades of policy on both sides:

• Mutual recognition of each other's systems, and an end to interference, villification, and subversion of each other.

• Mutual efforts "to transform the present state of armistice into a solid state of peace," with continued observance of the armistice until this was accomplished.

• Nonuse of force against each other, and implementation of confidence-building measures and large-scale arms reductions.

• Economic, cultural, and scientific exchanges, free correspondence between divided families, and the reopening of roads and railroads that had been severed at the North-South dividing line.

Three separate subcommittees on political and military activities and on exchanges were authorized in the agreement, to work out the many details, none of which were specified in the accord.

North Korea refused to deal with the issue of its nuclear program in the reconciliation agreement with the South but promised to work on a separate North-South nuclear accord before the end of the year. This was facilitated on December 18, when after clearance from the United States, Roh announced publicly that the American nuclear weapons had been withdrawn.

On December 24 an important meeting of the Central Committee of the North Korean Workers Party heard Kim Il Sung praise the recent North-South nonaggression pact as "the first epochal event" since the start of inter-Korean diplomacy in 1972. The meeting, the first party plenum centered on North-South issues in nine years, ended with a public report that contained no criticism of South Korea or the United States.

The party meeting was significant for two other reasons, which may have been connected. Kim Jong 11, the son and designated successor to the Great Leader, was named supreme commander of DPRK armed forces. And in parallel moves that could not have been made without approval of Kim Jong 11 and at least acquiescence by the armed forces commanders he now headed, the plenum apparently gave party clearance for international inspection of the country's nuclear program and for a bilateral nuclear accord to be worked out with the South. Selig Harrison of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was later told by a variety of North Korean and foreign observers that the plenum marked a conditional victory for pragmatists who argued for making a deal-compromising the nuclear issues in return for economic benefits and normalization of relations with the United States and Japan. Hard-line elements, according to Harrison, agreed to suspend the weapons program, but not to terminate it-being confident that U.S. and Japanese help would not be forthcoming.

The promised nuclear negotiations between the two Koreas convened at Panmunjom on December 26. As in the case of the nonaggression accords, the North's negotiators apparently had instructions to make a deal. On the second day of the talks, they appeared with a written proposal incorporating most of the sweeping South Korean language and dropping several earlier propositions that were unacceptable to the South. At one point the usually standoffish North Korean negotiators woke up their South Korean counterparts late at night for a series of one-on-one talks that made important progress.