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WASHINGTON : The groundbreaking accord with North Korea to close down its key nuclear facilities still leaves many questions unanswered such as when Pyongyang's atomic programme will end and how its nuclear arsenal will be dismantled, analysts said Tuesday.
Under Tuesday's agreement clinched at six-nation talks in Beijing, no deadline has been set for North Korea already with a bad track record to complete the process of disbanding its nuclear weapons.
The accord also does not deal with the removal of an unknown number of atomic bombs in North Korea's possession or even the enormous plutonium the erratic regime has chalked up for making between seven and 13 bombs, analysts said.
The agreement among the United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan just says that Pyongyang would have 60 days to shut down its main Yongbyon nuclear reactor and allow United Nations nuclear inspectors back into the country.
A number of key issues - including dismantling presumably the entire nuclear arsenal in the reclusive nation - has been deferred to an eventual phase.
The energy-starved regime would receive a first tranche of 50,000 tonnes of fuel oil - part of an eventual one million tonnes if the accord progresses as spelt out and the North permanently disables its key nuclear facilities.
"The agreement is worthwhile in comparison to the status quo but obviously there are some key omissions - the most significant is that there is no deadline for them to complete the elimination process," said Robert Einhorn, a top US weapons expert.
"It does say that steps should be taken to disable the (Yongbyon) facility but there is no time frame and furthermore, it doesn't address the removal of the nuclear bombs and fissile materials produced for such weapons," said Einhorn, a key nonproliferation official during the administration of president
Bill Clinton.
North Korea has produced enough plutonium from the Yongbyon facilities to make up to 13 nuclear bombs, experts said.
The hardline communist state also has a sophisticated uranium enrichment programme, as the United States had claimed in October 2002 and which led to the nuclear standoff, they said.
But the uranium based program was not mentioned in the agreement.
"The US decision to defer confrontation of North Korea over its uranium programme weakens the rationale for the Bush administration's diplomatic approach over the past five years," said Bruce Klingner, an Asia expert with the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.
"Moreover, it calls into question the necessity of instigating the crisis in 2002 when it was unwilling to stay the course," he said.
The agreement's "vague provisions and deferred requirements give Pyongyang loopholes that it will seek to exploit," Klinger said.
But the United States and the four other nations which negotiated with Pyongyang had agreed to a set of benchmarks for implementation even though the North Koreans would not sign on to them, said Michael Green, a senior director for Asian affairs at the US National Security Council until a year ago.
North Korea could only get the subsequent 950,000 tonnes of fuel oil if it carried out certain steps that the five had agreed to in principle, said Green, who had participated in six-party talks when he was President George W. Bush's key Asia advisor.
He still felt several critical issues were not answered by the agreement, including the uranium program "and whether or not they come clean on that.
"We still don't know whether they are stalling for time...The track record is not good," Green said. "But as a first step there is actual substance here and I think is important."
The US-based Arms Control Association, which has advocated for more effective diplomatic engagement to halt North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes, said the pact was a "long overdue first step" while warning that "the danger is not past and further progress is necessary.
"While it would be preferable to secure more dramatic and faster action toward the verifiable dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons, the perfect (goal) should not be the enemy of this necessary initial step," the association's executive director Daryl Kimball said.
The step-by-step process agreed to under the agreement is seen as a rollback of the Bush administration's earlier demand for a "complete, verifiable, and irreversible" dismantlement of Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal when six-party talks started in 2003.
"It sounds like the Bush administration has put things back to where they were at the end of the Clinton administration - only now the North Koreans have tested a nuclear weapon and have enough plutonium for seven to 10 nuclear bombs," Einhorn said. - AFP/ch
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