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Transcript in the news of
February 14, 2007 (Topical Edition)
>> Back from the nuclear brink North Korea's decision to close the reactor is
welcomed by the White House.
>> Four months after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, it's agreed to shut
down its main nuclear reactor in exchange for international aid. Including food
and fuel. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who was
also South Korea's former foreign minister welcomed the deal, saying that it was
the first practical stage toward a nonnuclear Peninsula.
>>For more than a decade the world has been worried that this is what North
Korea's leader dreams of every night.
>> Last October Kim, Jeong-Il made those worries grow an awful lot more. Deep
underground North Korea carried out a nuclear test and proudly declared itself a
nuclear power. To the anger of many including its neighbour, China. So right
here in the Chinese capitol negotiators have persuaded the North Koreans to stop
and go no further. This afternoon deal makers from six countries lit from all
the flashes. Some of them did the same thing at the negotiating table. United
States has had to move toward the conciliation.
>> The goal is the verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula. This is a good beginning to that effort. In next 60 days we
expect North Korea to shut down and seal the Yongbyon nuclear facility for the
purpose of abandonment. This nuclear reactor inside North Korea is the focus of
the new agreement. The regime has agreed to shut it down in exchange for
valuable aid and the promise of better relations with the outside world.
>> The people of North Korea could certainly do with whatever help they can
get. They are among the poorest in the world. And they have no say in
their country's nuclear policy.
>> The agreement reached here in Beijing is important but it doesn't
necessarily mean that North Korea gets its name scrubbed from the Access of
Evil. The deal does not force North Korea to disarm, to hand over its stockpile
of weapons. That central problem is left for another day.
>> So the deal suggest a new direction for the White House, and will
Pyongyang keep its promise?
>> You're watching bbc world news. A new commitment from North Korea to
suspend the operations at its nuclear reactor. President Bush calls it the best
opportunity for diplomacy in the region. Before becoming the United States
ambassador to UN, John Bolton was under Secretary for international security
policy. He led the early stages of those negotiations with North Korea and is
critical of this deal.
>> Well the best you can say about it is that it's only a first step because
so little of the really critical issues are addressed. I think even as a first
step it's a bad deal in the sense of a bad signal. This arrangement contradicts
the policy that President pursued for the first six years in office. It rewards
bad behaviour, it sends a bad signal not only to North Korea, but Iran and other
would-be proliferators as well.
>> The message here is that you make a bomb, and you get a great deal.
>> No I think the message of this agreement is that if the United States is
ready to normalize with North Korea, North Korea is ready to give up the bomb.
This is a position that they have had all along really. They feel that United
States sitting on top of 10,000 nuclear weapons is in no position to tell them
they shouldn't have any. And put them on the Access of Evil list. I think that
what's happened that North Korea has been ready to make the deal. It was made
today. In the last three year, it's the Bush administration that has changed its
position.
>> Why? What prompted the administration to change its policy.
>> Just before Christmas Condoleezza Rice went to the Mr. Bush and said,
"Look, we've got a foreign policy a success and we can't get this deal with
North Korea." So the U.S. relaxed its essential position which was "No bilateral
negotiations," and in Berlin Mr. Christopher Hill worked out in a minute a month
ago which is essentially what has been confirmed today by the six-party talks.
We shifted to really bilateral diplomacy with the six-party talks a mime. I
think Mr. Bush wants to distract people from Iraq.
>> Let's look at the North Korean angle of the things. North Korean
media already described it as a temporary suspension. Is that encouraging start?
>> Well, everything in this agreement is tit and tat. It's a practices that
calibrated. They do something we do something. So when they say it's temporary,
they mean that they're watching to see whether we live up to some of the things
we promised to do if they do what they said they're going to do. I think
you're going to have a tough bargaining ahead. It carried forward the agreement
of last year. Every step of the way is going to be hard bargaining.
>> Part of the bargaining is getting the inspectors in. Will they be able to
see absolutely everything they need to.
>> Last 1994 to the year 2002 when the Bush administration abrogated the
agreed framework the freeze in that it previously existed they were inspectors,
IAEA, the U.S. Government inspectors. North Korea didn't give them a hard time
at all. And nobody really disputes that the inspection process worked under the
agreed framework.
>> Thank you for joining us. |
