The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [165]
When the LWR proposal was resurrected in the Geneva negotiations with the United States, Gallucci was warned by senior State and Defense Department officials against making any commitment, especially a financial commitment, to the proposal. On July 19, at the end of six days of talks, Gallucci agreed in a formal statement that the United States would "support the introduction of LWRs and ... explore with the DPRK ways in which LWRs could be obtained," but only as part of a "final resolution" of nuclear issues. Gallucci later said this gauzy statement was "seven times removed from any commitment" to provide LWRs.
The negotiations adjourned without progress on the contentious issue of permitting IAEA "special inspections" of the two suspected nuclear waste sites. The two sides agreed to continue meeting, but a U.S. statement specified that it would not begin the third round of negotiations until "serious discussions" were under way on nuclear issues in North-South channels and between North Korea and the IAEA.
KIM YOUNG SAM BLOWS THE WHISTLE
The American-North Korean negotiations in June had had the limited objective of persuading Pyongyang not to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Washington had offered limited benefits in return. Privately Gallucci characterized his initial negotiating posture as, "If they do everything we want, we send them a box of oranges." The North Korean offer in July, to give up its entire indigenous nuclear program in favor of the proliferation-resistant light-water reactors, had dramatically changed the bidding. Now the objective in view was much more ambitious-but it was also clear that Pyongyang would demand more extensive benefits in return. While American officials were intrigued and some elated, many in Seoul were unhappy with the shift from limited to virtually unlimited U.S.-DPRK talks.
As it turned out, progress toward meeting the American conditions for convening the third round of U.S.-DPRK talks, in which broader issues were to be discussed, was excruciatingly slow. Talks between North Korea and the Vienna-based IAEA quickly sank into exasperating arguments over the DPRK's obligations. As the IAEA saw it, North Korea was still required by treaty to comply with all nuclear inspection requirements that had been or would be imposed on it, like any other signatory, as long as it had not officially left the NPT. Pyongyang, however, insisted that in suspending its withdrawal from the treaty, it had entered a "special" and "unique" category in which it alone would determine what inspection requirements to accept. It was ready to accept very few.
To keep check on the North Korean program while the arguments continued, Washington invented an interim concept called "continuity of safeguards," which it insisted was essential. This required that agency inspectors be admitted to the Yongbyon site to replace films and batteries in monitoring equipment and to make other nonintrusive tests to check that no diversion of nuclear materials was taking place. While the IAEA was uncomfortable with this ad hoc concept-insisting that North Korea should comply in the fullest with its requirements-it went along. With film and batteries running down or even running out from time to time, the IAEA repeatedly threatened to declare that "continuity of safeguards" had been lost. It was clear that such a declaration would trigger an immediate demand for UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea.
IAEA inspectors were permitted to return to Yongbyon in August (as they had been in mid-May) but only to replace the film and batteries in the monitoring equipment. The IAEA protested vigorously that this was not