Agreed Framework 2.0 Update
Updates: According to this AP report, we’ve now presented the North Koreans with a proposed verification protocol and invited North Korea to stall for two more months and gut it offer comments. South Korean negotiator Kim Sook says, “The ball is actually in the North Korean court ….” True to form, State is withholding all details about what the protocol would consist of.
And as if in response for my rant below about the lack of media skepticism, Reuters’s Jon Herskovitz writes one of the more skeptical stories on AF 2.0 I’ve seen since the Singapore Surrender:
Sputtering talks on ending North Korea‘s nuclear plans will gain a higher profile this week with an unprecedented meeting of ministers, but lingering questions on the North’s ambitions threaten to drag the process down.
Kudos to Herskovitz for being one of the few to point out how little this deal will accomplish, and the administration’s obvious legacy grasp before it hands the the problem to the next administration unsolved, only with less leverage over the North Koreans. Well worth reading.
Meanwhile — just six months from the end of her tenure — Secretary Rice dutifully keeps up the pretense that she is remotely interested in getting meaningful verification, full disclosure, or actual disarmament from the North Koreans. No doubt, plenty of people are actually fooled by this demonstrable B.S.
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It’s another breakthrough! They’ve agreed to talk about maybe someday agreeing on how to verify what hasn’t even disclosed yet:
Technical details of the verification process still need to be hashed out by a working group, but the six nations hope to agree on specific steps by early September, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said.
“We would like the protocol to be reached within 45 days and, secondly, to begin verification within 45 days. We’re anticipating that, and we don’t see any obstacles,” Hill told reporters after the talks.
The envoys will be gathering later in the month for a regional security forum in Singapore and may hold informal talks there, he said.
The agreement, though not yet complete, signals the start of the final phase of years of on-again, off-again negotiations to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Beyond the October deadline for disabling North Korea’s main nuclear facility at Yongbyon, the agreement did not set a timetable for full disarmament. But President Bush is believed to be eager to see North Korea disarmed before he leaves office in January.
Kim Sook, Seoul‘s top nuclear envoy, said afterward that “a very difficult task” lies ahead in implementing verification, though he did not elaborate. He added that there should be “unlimited” access to the North’s facilities during the verification process.
Questions remain about how much of its nuclear programs North Korea disclosed in a declaration last month. The North, which exploded a nuclear device in 2006, is believed by experts to have produced enough weapons-grade plutonium to make as many as 10 nuclear bombs, and the U.S. has accused Pyongyang of running a second weapons program based on uranium. [AP, Tini Tran]
Just don’t expect our generally uninquisitive press corps to ask questions that might reveal that. Reading this CNN report, for instance, you could be forgiven for thinking that a substantive agreement had been reached. It’s odd how Bush’s fiercest critics have a way of assuming uncharacteristic silence about his policies of which they happen to approve. I wonder how well this issue would be covered if they were half as skeptical about this policy shift as they were about The Surge. One question they should be asking is just how technically prepared this Administration really is to design and oversee a meaningful verification process. Their own assessments don’t inspire much confidence:
“What we need to do is, you know, verify the declaration, but also pursue the next and the final phase of denuclearization concurrently,” Sung Kim, director of Korean affairs at the State Department, told reporters accompanying Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Seoul. “And I think, you know, if we work together with the other parties, it’s possible that we might complete the task. I don’t think we should rule it out.” [Yonhap; emphasis mine]
The gist of Yonhap’s article is that the next president is going to be stuck with a deal full of loopholes in which neither candidate has has expressed much confidence. But let’s not allow that to interfere with any photo ops.
Related: I’ll leave the last word to veteran CIA officer Art Brown, writing in the New York Times, and saying a lot of the same things I’ve said here.