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US says no compromise on verifying NKorea's nuclear program
WASHINGTON (AFP) - - The United States said Thursday it would not compromise on rigid measures to verify North Korea's nuclear program, rejecting any notion it was desperate in sealing an atomic deal with the hardline communist state.
Washington wants North Korea to adopt verification measures aimed at confirming that a declaration it provided on its nuclear program to a six-nation forum was "whole and complete and verifiable," officials said.
They made the statement as top US nuclear envoy Christopher Hill extended his stay by another day to Friday in Pyongyang where he was apparently attempting to save the crumbling nuclear disarmament deal.
Hill will return Friday to South Korea, before flying to China, which chairs six party talks involving also the United States, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan aimed at ending the North's nuclear program, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
"What the other five members are looking for from North Korea is agreement on a verification protocol and that is an irreducible component of the six-party process moving forward," he told reporters.
North Korea has accused Washington of violating its dignity by seeking Iraq-style "house searches" as part of a rigid verification protocol.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was not going to compromise on the verification process for any "geopolitical" reasons, officials said.
"From her point of view, they meet the criteria or they don't and there is nothing inevitable about this process," said a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"She is not going to shortchange our ability to stand up and say, 'Yes, we have verified this declaration as full and complete as best as we can ascertain in the interests of some geopolitical expedience.
"She is not going to do that."
The United States says the North must first agree to procedures for outside verification of its nuclear declaration before it could remove the hardline communist state from a US terrorism blacklist.
Pyongyang however accused Washington of breaching the six-nation deal by failing to remove it from a terrorism blacklist first.
The North has warned it would begin work to restart its key nuclear reactor and barred UN atomic inspectors from the complex.
The dispute is threatening to undo a February 2007 six-nation deal which led the North to shut down its plutonium-producing plants.
US officials said that Hill was expected to propose that North Korea first give China a plan that includes sampling, access to key sites and other verification provisions sought by the United States.
President George W. Bush would then provisionally remove the North from the terrorism list, after which China would announce North Korea's acceptance of the verification plan.
This would allow Pyongyang to assert that the delisting occurred before the verification plan was in place.
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