BEIJING: Despite great expectations for a breakthrough deal on ending North Korea’s nuclear crisis four days of tough international negotiations sponsored by China have produced little hope of a quick resolution.

The surge of optimism which accompanied the beginning of the talks on Thursday, vanished by the weekend when it became clear that North Korea wanted huge amounts of energy assistance in return for shutting down its nuclear programme.

How the participating countries will foot the bill for the energy aid to North Korea, following the sealing of its main nuclear reactor, has become a new stumbling block in the tortuous negotiations. What comes first — the aid or the halt to the nuclear programme continued to plague the progress of the talks.

“The chicken or the egg modus operandi of the talks is something we have seen before,” Li Dunqiu, an expert on the Korean peninsula at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said. “The big sticking point is who is going to compromise first — North Korea or the United States.”

Pyongyang’s insistence on “first energy assistance, then denuclearisation” was the reason for the premature ending of an earlier phase of China-hosted talks.

Four of North Korea’s neighbours — South Korea, Japan, China and Russia — and the United States have conducted a series of multilateral talks with Pyongyang over the last three years, hoping to persuade the Stalinist regime of Kim Jong-II to give up its nuclear weapons.

But the regime sees its arsenal as a bargaining chip for demanding aid and security assurances and has not made any steps towards disarming. Rather, Pyongyang used its ballistic missiles tests last July and its underground nuclear test in October to wring more concessions from China — its main trading partner, and South Korea, its largest humanitarian benefactor.

Analysts believe that North Korea’s nuclear provocations have also forced the US to agree to concessions it previously refused to consider, like holding bilateral talks with Pyongyang and negotiating over frozen North Korean funds.

In 2005, the US riled Pyongyang by forcing Macao’s Banco Delta Asia to cease business with North Korea because of accusations of money laundering and counterfeiting. In retaliation, Pyongyang boycotted the six-party talks until December, suggesting that the US should discuss ways to lift the sanctions outside the six-party talks.

Last month the US had one-on-one talks with North Korea in Berlin, paving the way for Pyongyang’s return to the negotiating table. A pro-Pyongyang newspaper based in Japan claimed on Sunday that during the Berlin talks Washington promised to lift financial sanctions imposed on North Korea within 30 days in return for North Korea taking the first step towards dismantling its nuclear weapons programme within 60 days.

The US points man for the six-party talks, Christopher Hill, denied the report in the Japanese ‘Asahi’ newspaper that North Korea and the US had signed a “memorandum” in their Berlin meeting. The Asahi earlier said Hill and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye-gwan, had already signed a pact in which North Korea allegedly agreed to shut down its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon and accepted an international inspection in exchange for energy and humanitarian aid.

But a China-drafted deal distributed to all national delegations at the beginning of the current round of talks dovetailed with the rough terms of the agreement reported by the media. The host country’s draft stipulates that North Korea would freeze its main nuclear-related facilities within two months in return for alternative energy supplies.

While the US is seeking a permanent halt to North Korea’s nuclear programme, experts say Pyongyang is intent on enforcing a “freeze” of its nuclear capacities — a measure that could be quickly undone if negotiations for energy and aid break down.

Such a scenario unfolded in 2002 when the 1994 Agreed Framework between the Clinton administration and North Korea collapsed and Pyongyang expelled the International Atomic Energy Authority inspectors. Under the landmark deal signed between Washington and Pyongyang in 1994, North Korea had agreed to “freeze” its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for free oil deliveries and the gift of two light-water reactors worth 4.5 billion dollars.

“We’re not looking to provide energy assistance so that they could avoid taking further the steps on denuclearisation,” US negotiator Hill said on Sunday. “We understand that you can’t just get there in one jump — you have to take several steps, so we’re prepared to take several steps.”

“We want to help their economy, and especially we want to help the North Korean people who we believe have suffered enough. But the way to help them is to get them to give up these weapons,” he added.

North Korea is said to have demanded energy aid equivalent of two million Kilowatt a year, in exchange for taking steps to scrap its nuclear programme. But this is far more than the 500,000 tons of heavy fuel set out in the 1994 agreement.

With Monday set as the final day of negotiations, China has proposed the setting up of working groups that would continue talks on the amount of energy aid and the way the participating parties would share the cost.

—Dawn/The IPS News Service