China urges North Korea to accept nuclear inspectors
Armed North Korean soldiers stand guard on the banks of Yalu River near the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong, December 21, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Stringer
BEIJING/SEOUL |
China, North Korea's only major ally, has continually urged dialogue to resolve the crisis and has been reluctant to blame its neighbor for the shelling of a South Korean island last month, in which two Marines and two civilians were killed.
South Korea held further live-fire drills on the island on Monday, raising fears of all-out war, but the North did not retaliate. Instead, it offered to accept nuclear inspectors it has kicked out of the country before.
"North Korea has the right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, but also at the same time must allow IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspectors in," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in Beijing.
"All parties should realize that artillery fire and military force cannot solve the issues on the peninsula, and dialogue and cooperation are the only correct approaches."
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson said on his return from a visit to Pyongyang, where he acted as an unofficial envoy, that North Korea had promised to allow in inspectors to make sure it is not processing highly enriched uranium.
He told reporters North Korea had shown a "pragmatic attitude" in his unofficial talks.
"The specifics are that they will allow IAEA personnel to go to Yongbyon to ensure that they are not processing highly enriched uranium, that they are proceeding with peaceful purposes," Richardson said in Beijing, referring to the North's main nuclear site.
But analysts said it was unclear how much access IAEA inspectors would really get because North Korea has limited their oversight in the past. They also said the major worry was whether there were other nuclear sites hidden outside of Yongbyon.
"The question that remains is whether this is the only facility. A uranium enrichment programme is much easier to hide than a plutonium one," said Andrei Lankov at Kookmin University in Seoul.
South Korea and the United States suspect North Korea has more sites geared to enriching uranium outside Yongbyon, the complex which is at the heart of the North's plutonium weapons programme.
It consists of a five-megawatt reactor, whose construction began in 1980, a fuel fabrication facility and a plutonium reprocessing plant, where weapons-grade material is extracted from spent fuel rods.
Lankov said the North's suggestion of compromise after provocation was a "usual tactic" of the impoverished state that had worked in the past to win aid.
"They create a crisis, they show that they are dangerous and drive tensions high," he said. "Then they show they could make some concessions."
If IAEA inspectors were allowed to carry out such monitoring, it could help to address a key concern about North Korea's uranium enrichment work because highly-enriched material can be used in atomic weapons.
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