S. Korea hopes '94 nuclear pact
between U.S., N. Korea remains intact
By Jim Lea, Osan bureau chief
South Korean officials are concerned that the United States may suggest building
conventional power plants in North Korea instead of two nuclear plants that were promised
to Pyongyang in 1994.
"It’s possible that the United States will make such a proposal in the talks
to be held in Honolulu on Saturday," said a government official, who asked for
anonymity. "This could be problematical, but we can only wait and see if such a
proposal is made and what it contains."
There is no official indication that Washington is considering switching conventional
power plants for the nuclear plants. Saturday’s Trilateral Coordination and Oversight
Group meeting in Hawaii will be attended by officials from Washington, Seoul and Tokyo.
If a new proposal is made, the South Korean official said, it will be difficult to
renegotiate the 1994 nuclear agreement with Pyongyang, especially in view of the current
animosity toward Washington over the Bush administration’s review of U.S. policy
toward the North.
If the proposal increases the estimated $4.6 billion cost of the project, Seoul cannot
pay more, he said. Under the agreement, South Korea is to pay 70 percent of the cost,
Japan is to pay $1 billion and the remainder is to be paid by a number of European nations
and the United States.
South Korea is concerned that any attempt to revise the agreement could further
antagonize North Korea and hinder improved relations between it and both Seoul and
Washington. The State Department has said the United States still supports and will stick
to the 1994 agreement and expects North Korea to do the same.
In 1994 Washington promised the North two light water nuclear reactors in return for
scrapping its old nuclear power program. Western intelligence agencies assert that the
North was developing nuclear weapons under the old program, using plutonium reprocessed
from spent uranium used to power its single 5MW graphite-based reactor.
North Korea consistently denied those allegations, but refused to allow International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections that would prove or disprove the claims. Last
year, some Republican members of Congress proposed that conventional thermal power plants
be substituted for the nuclear plants.
North Korea has complained three times this month — and several times before that
U.S. "foot dragging" has caused delays in the project, further increasing the
country’s critical power shortage. A lack of electric power has caused many factories
to shut down, officials say.
The reactor project was to have been completed by 2003, but experts now say it cannot
be completed before 2007 and possibly not until 2010.
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