Are we finally making demands?
The United States will provide no economic aid to North Korea unless the North returns to the six-party talks on ending its nuclear ambitions, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday.
“We are not going to expend one penny of those funds in the absence of their voluntary return to the six-party talks and their resumption of the obligations that they’ve already agreed to,” Clinton told a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. “This money is, you know, there as a backstop in the event we see the kind of changes in actions that we’re looking for from the North Koreans.”
Clinton was discussing the $98 million the Barack Obama administration has asked for in next year’s budget to provide fuel oil and cover the disabling of North Korea’s nuclear facilities under a six-party deal that involves the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia. North Korea has threatened to conduct further nuclear and ballistic missile tests in protest against the UN Security Council’s embargoes of three North Korean firms after the North’s April 5 rocket launch.
The North also said it will boycott the six-party talks and restart its disabled nuclear facilities to enhance its nuclear arsenal in preparation for possible attacks from the U.S. and its allies.
North Korea said last week it is useless to engage in dialogue with the U.S. due to its “hostile policy” toward the North.
Clinton recently described as “implausible if not impossible” the chances of North Korea returning to the multinational nuclear talks, amid allegations that North Korea aims to derail the six-party talks with the goal of reviving bilateral talks with the U.S., discontinued after President George W. Bush’s inauguration in 2001.
In the second phase of the six-party deal, the U.S. is obligated to provide 200,000 tons of heavy fuel oil and help pay for the disabling of North Korea’s nuclear facilities.
The third and final phase calls for dismantlement of all of North Korea’s nuclear programs and facilities in return for the North getting hefty economic and political benefits from the five other parties to the talks.
U.S. congressional reports have estimated that the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear facilities will cost up to $575 million over the next several years.
The bill, HR 2642, the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008, enables the U.S. government to finance the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear facilities through 2013, superseding the Glenn Amendment, which bans any financial aid to states that have conducted a nuclear test.
The U.S. spent $25 million on North Korea in the fiscal year that ended last September.