N. Korea to try to renegotiate nuclear deal with Obama: White House

(ATTN: UPDATES with State Dept. spokesman's remarks in paras 10-12)
By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 (Yonhap) -- North Korea will be an early challenge for the
incoming Barack Obama administration with its effort to renegotiate a six-party
denuclearization deal once Obama is inaugurated, a senior White House official
said Wednesday.
"These talks will be an early challenge for the incoming administration,"
National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said in a speech at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies. "North Korea will test the new
administration by once again trying to split the six parties and renegotiate the
deal."
Hadley stressed the need for the the U.S., South Korea, China, Japan and Russia
to join forces to resist North Korea's efforts to break up their coordination.
"When its efforts to do so fail, North Korea will need to accept a verification
agreement so we can verify the disablement and then dismantlement of that
country's nuclear capabilities," he said.
The chief foreign policy adviser to outgoing President Bush was referring to
North Korea's refusal to allow international inspectors to take samples from its
main nuclear reactor to assess its past and present nuclear activities.
North Korea did not agree to a verification regime in the latest six-party talks,
held early last month in Beijing, mainly due to a disagreement on sampling. It
said it will agree to sampling later, possibly in the third phase of the nuclear
deal.
North Korea is now in the second phase, in which it is supposed to disable its
nuclear facilities in return for 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil or the
equivalent in energy aid.
The third and last phase calls for the North to dismantle all its nuclear
facilities and programs in exchange for massive economic aid and diplomatic
recognition by the U.S. and Japan.
"Without this verification agreement, there can be no progress," Hadley said.
"This is especially true because some in the intelligence community have
increasing concerns that North Korea has an ongoing covert uranium enrichment
program."
In a daily news briefing, State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood urged
North Korea to agree to the verification protocol.
"We obviously want to see the North agree to a verification protocol, yet still
the ball is in the North's court," he said. "We want to see that happen. Whether
or not that's going to happen in the next couple of weeks, you know, probably
not."
"The North Korean issue remains a challenge and the new administration will have
to deal with that," the spokesman said.
The Bush administration has been under fire from critics who say it has made too
many concessions by not delving into the North's suspected uranium-based nuclear
program and alleged proliferation of nuclear technology to Syria and other
countries.
In addition, the administration has been criticized for focusing on the North's
nuclear proliferation rather than on the dismantlement of its nuclear arsenal.
But Bush administration officials defended the North Korean nuclear deal as one
of its major foreign policy achievements, saying that stopped the North from
producing more plutonium, which could be used for nuclear warheads.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently said North Korea has built several
nuclear bombs, and U.S. intelligence and defense reports have categorized the
North as a nuclear weapons state. However, the Bush administration reiterated its
official position of not recognizing the North as a nuclear state.
Obama has said the North has eight nuclear weapons, but did not elaborate. The
U.S. president-elect has said he will support the six-party nuclear talks while
seeking more direct bilateral engagement.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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