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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she wanted quick results in North Korean disarmament talks that resume next week, setting a two-year time frame to dismantle Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
“I'm delighted the talks are going to start again, but they have to start to show results pretty soon,” Rice told AFP in an exclusive interview a week before the six-party negotiations begin in Beijing following a 13-month break.
Rice said Washington was ready to offer North Korea economic aid, energy assistance and improved political relations if it follows through on a September 2005 “joint statement” in which it pledged to abandon the development of nuclear weapons.
But she declined to provide details of specific incentives being put on the table by Washington ahead of the talks, which will also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.
“I think that everyone is looking, in the next round or so, for the North Koreans to do something that demonstrates that they are in fact committed to denuclearization,” she said.
Rice said her goal was to have North Korea complete irreversible steps to dismantle its nuclear arms program before the end of President George W. Bush's term in January 2009.
“It's the only timetable I've got — I'll be long gone in two years, of course that's my timetable,” she said.
Rice said it would take longer for North Korea to fully “break down” its nuclear infrastructure, which includes a plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon, fuel reprocessing facilities and a test site where the Stalinist regime exploded its first nuclear device on October 9.
“But it shouldn't take very long to take some steps that would clearly be irreversible in terms of denuclearization,” she said.
The six-nation forum started in 2003 in an effort to stop the North acquiring nuclear weapons.
North Korea signed on to the vaguely worded September 2005 joint statement to give up its nuclear ambitions in return for security guarantees, energy benefits and other aid.
But another round of talks in November failed to make any progress, and North Korea pulled out of the negotiations shortly afterwards to protest US financial sanctions imposed against it for alleged money laundering and counterfeiting.
It then conducted its first nuclear weapons test on October 9, triggering global condemnation — including from closest ally China — and unprecedented United Nations sanctions.
Under heavy pressure from China, North Korea agreed on October 31 to return to the talks.
But in a sign of how difficult the negotiations are likely to be, it then took more than five weeks to set a starting date amid differences over what would be discussed in the forum.
Rice's top envoy on the issue, Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill, will arrive in Beijing on Saturday and could hold preliminary talks with his Chinese and North Korean counterparts ahead of Monday's formal meeting, a senior US official said.
Among the issues expected to be addressed is a timetable for inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to begin visiting North Korean nuclear sites.
North Korea also wants Washington to ease its financial sanctions as a show of good faith.
Rice expressed the hope that the six-party negotiations would ultimately involve far more than simply disarming North Korea.
“We've been very clear that we think that what's at stake is more than just the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula — it's the whole future of the Korean peninsula as well as security relations with the region as a whole,” she said.
