U.S. seeks to avoid another failed nuke deal with N. Korea

BEIJING - North Korea shutters its atomic reactor and is no longer making plutonium for nuclear bombs, prompting aid shipments to flow to the impoverished country that struggles with shortages of electricity and food.

That happened Saturday as Pyongyang took its first step toward disarmament since the latest nuclear standoff began in late 2002. It's also exactly what happened in 1994 after the North struck a disarmament deal with the U.S.

As arms negotiators gather anew this week in Beijing, Washington is wrestling with the challenge of preventing history from repeating itself - having another disarmament agreement end in failure.

Envoys arrived Tuesday for talks on the next steps for North Korea's disarmament, which Washington hopes will lead by year's end to disabling - meaning not easily reactivated - nuclear facilities.

After initial meetings with the North, U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill expressed optimism a timeframe for future steps could be agreed upon.

"I think we're all in the same ballpark," Hill said after seeing his North Korean counterpart, Kim Kye Gwan, ahead of the resumed six-nation nuclear talks Wednesday. "We had a good discussion - at this point there are no showstoppers."

But as Hill has noted, the reactor shutdown itself is only significant if it leads to future steps that irrevocably prevent North Korea from making more nuclear bombs.

The North also shut down the reactor in 1994 after signing a deal with Washington, getting oil shipments in return and the promise of two nuclear reactors for generating electricity.

Pyongyang was supposed to begin dismantling its atomic program only after the new reactors - a type that cannot be easily used to make weapons - were completed.

But construction dragged on for years as the agreement lacked support from the U.S. Congress.

The U.S. says the North, amid the stalling, embarked secretly on a uranium enrichment program that is separate from its known plutonium facilities. Either plutonium or uranium can be used to make atomic bombs.

In 2002, U.S. diplomats confronted the North with the alleged evidence of the uranium program and claimed Pyongyang confessed, although it has never publicly done so. The U.S. halted oil shipments, leading to eventual collapse of the accord and the standoff that exists today.

Washington says things are different this time.

Instead of an agreement only with the North, the U.S. has brought regional partners China, Japan, Russia and South Korea to the negotiating table.

In principle, Beijing and Seoul are able to apply more leverage on the North as its main trade partners and sources of aid.

"I don't think it's going to be so easy for the North Koreans to walk away from this agreement," Hill told The Associated Press in an interview this week. "A lot of countries are stakeholders to this agreement."

The 1994 deal set out no strict deadlines, meaning the North was assured of unlimited, regular oil shipments until its new reactors were ready.

The latest deal, inked in February, limits the total energy aid the North will receive to the equivalent of 1 million tons of oil and set a deadline for the shutdown of the reactor.

However, North Korea missed the reactor deadline by 13 weeks after the U.S. delayed fulfilling a separate promise to help unfreeze North Korean funds in a bank in the Chinese territory of Macau. Washington blacklisted the bank in 2005 for its alleged help laundering money for the North Korean government.

The U.S. backed down from its refusal to address the bank issue amid the nuclear talks to win the North's agreement to shut down its nuclear reactor.

Previously, American officials had shunned discussing any rewards for North Korea until it completely and irreversibly dismantled its nuclear program, arguing that violating that principle would be tantamount to giving in to nuclear blackmail.

The next milestone in the process will be North Korea's obligation to list all of its nuclear programs, and the U.S. has said that must include the uranium program, as well.

But Hill already gave signs Tuesday that the United States could bend on the timing.

"I don't like to get into a situation where if we don't nail down the declaration, then we can't start any disablement," he said. "I want to have a little flexibility on that."

To make sure it avoids a painful case of nuclear déjà vu, the U.S. will be expected to again summon its will to compromise.