The envoy, Christopher R. Hill, told reporters that he had held “detailed and very substantive” talks in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, but he would not say whether he was satisfied with the outcome. He said he still had to brief Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was traveling to Kazakhstan on Friday. Mr. Hill has been seeking to salvage a fragile disarmament deal that the Bush administration had hoped would stand as a major part of its legacy. But the accord has been threatened since last week, when North Korea broke the seals placed by United Nations inspectors on its equipment at its nuclear complex in Yongbyon and said it was restarting a facility to manufacture bomb-grade plutonium. In Washington, Robert Wood, a State Department spokesman, said the North Koreans “continue to take some steps to reverse disablement in some of the Yongbyon facilities.” Before Mr. Hill left this week for the North, senior State Department officials portrayed the trip as a last-ditch effort to save the deal. “This is it,” one senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules. The official said he believed that if the United States and North Korea failed to iron out their differences, matters might have to be kicked to the next administration. But on Friday, State Department officials were taking a different tack. They noted that Mr. Hill was leaving his deputy in Seoul, with possible plans to return to Pyongyang for more talks in the next few days, and said they remained hopeful that the deal might yet be salvaged. Christopher R. Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon.
Christopher Hill Leaves North Korea With Issues Unresolved
Envoy Leaves North Korea With Issues Unresolved
By HELENE COOPER
Published: October 3, 2008
WASHINGTON — An American envoy returned to the South Korean capital on Friday after three days of inconclusive talks with North Korea, while Bush administration officials said the North’s government was continuing to take steps toward restarting its nuclear weapons program.
The envoy, Christopher R. Hill, told reporters that he had held “detailed and very substantive” talks in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, but he would not say whether he was satisfied with the outcome. He said he still had to brief Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was traveling to Kazakhstan on Friday.
Mr. Hill has been seeking to salvage a fragile disarmament deal that the Bush administration had hoped would stand as a major part of its legacy. But the accord has been threatened since last week, when North Korea broke the seals placed by United Nations inspectors on its equipment at its nuclear complex in Yongbyon and said it was restarting a facility to manufacture bomb-grade plutonium.
In Washington, Robert Wood, a State Department spokesman, said the North Koreans “continue to take some steps to reverse disablement in some of the Yongbyon facilities.”
Before Mr. Hill left this week for the North, senior State Department officials portrayed the trip as a last-ditch effort to save the deal. “This is it,” one senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules. The official said he believed that if the United States and North Korea failed to iron out their differences, matters might have to be kicked to the next administration.
But on Friday, State Department officials were taking a different tack. They noted that Mr. Hill was leaving his deputy in Seoul, with possible plans to return to Pyongyang for more talks in the next few days, and said they remained hopeful that the deal might yet be salvaged.
The North was supposed to be dismantling its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon as part of the agreement, which was announced with fanfare in June and was followed by North Korea’s public demolition of a cooling tower there. Any resumption of nuclear work at Yongbyon would violate the terms of that pact.
North Korea has complained that the United States has not made good on its promise to remove North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, as President Bush announced in June that he was prepared to do, and instead has made new demands. One of those would require North Korea to accept a strict and intrusive verification system before the United States would carry out reciprocal steps.
To break that impasse, Mr. Hill this week proposed a new approach that would give China, as close an ally as North Korea has at this point, a more prominent role in verification efforts. Under one idea, administration officials said, North Korea would submit a list of its nuclear sites to China, rather than to the United States, though it would still have to permit inspections from American as well as Chinese officials. It remains unclear whether North Korea accepted that proposal.
“We were discussing all phases of completing phase two,” Mr. Hill said, “including and especially the issue of verification.”
He declined to say whether he had made any progress. “I don’t want to talk about progress, and I don’t want to talk about specific issues,” he said. “I just want to tell you there were lengthy, detailed discussions. And I need to brief my boss on precisely what those discussions are, so that she can make decisions about our next step.”
