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.