S. Korea welcomes nuclear accord, calls for new talks
S. Korea welcomes nuclear accord, calls for new talks
SEOUL (AFP): South Korea and Japan yesterday welcomed a U.S.- North Korea accord on restructuring the North's controversial nuclear program, with Seoul's president, Kim Young-sam, calling on Pyongyang to reopen talks with the South.
"A basis for a complete solution to the nuclear issue and the maintenance of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula has been laid," Kim said in a budget speech read on his behalf at the National Assembly.
"We hope that the North's new leadership ... comes to the dialogue table and cooperates with us on the road to peace and co-prosperity for the Korean people," Kim said.
Japan also hailed the accord reached in Geneva late Monday. "We would like to welcome (it)," Foreign Minister Yohei Kono told a press conference.
Kono said the agreement should help clear the way for the resumption of Japan-North Korea talks on diplomatic normalization. "Generally speaking, one obstacle has been lifted," he said.
The South Korean president, however, stopped short of proposing any speedy revival of the inter-Korean summit aborted by a sudden death of North Korea President Kim Il-sung on July 8.
Officials here noted that Kim Il-sung's eldest son and designated successor, Kim Jong-il, had not yet assumed the two top posts left vacant by his father -- state president and party secretary general.
The Kim statement sealed an embarrassing policy about-face for Seoul, which analysts here said it had to take to avoid risking soured ties with Washington and sidelining itself in the U.S.- North Korea talks.
Only a week ago, Kim accused Washington of rushing into a half-baked compromise with Pyongyang and suggested that the diplomatically-isolated North would be left to implode under the weight of its economic difficulties.
Water reactors
The agreement was called a "framework document" by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Robert Gallucci, who announced it at a press conference in Geneva.
"I think it is a broadly acceptable and positive agreement," Gallucci said, adding he would return to Geneva on Friday to sign the accord, provided it is backed by the North Korean and U.S. governments.
The agreement aims to prevent North Korea from developing an atomic arsenal, thereby removing the threat of a nuclear arms race on the Korean peninsula, in exchange for international aid to Pyongyang.
It also contained a "political and a diplomatic dimension ... and provisions relating to representations in Washington and Pyongyang," Gallucci said.
Gallucci refused to disclose the details but South Korean Foreign Minister Han Sung-joo said North Korea had agreed to open all its nuclear facilities, including two undeclared ones suspected of storing nuclear waste for weapons.
When North Korea freezes nuclear activities and accepts IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections of all its facilities, "nuclear transparency of the past, present, and future will be guaranteed," Han said.
Han said he believed the North would implement the accord, because: "It knows its implementation will be in its best interest."
South Korea's state-run Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) radio said it had learned that the contents of the accord called on the United States to provide two 1,000-megawatt light water reactors by the year 2003.
In return, North Korea will tear down a five-megawatt reactor and a controversial radio-chemistry lab and scrap the construction of a 50-megawatt and a 200-megawatt reactor to prevent production of plutonium.