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WASHINGTON: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il seems serious about wanting to abandon his nuclear weapons programme as he faces pressure to revive the Stalinist state's impoverished economy and maintain popular support at home, a US State Department expert said on Thursday.
"I don't think the nuclear weapons are the deal and end all of Kim Jong-Il's national security strategy. I think it is much broader than that," said John Merrill, the Northeast Asia chief of the department's intelligence and research bureau.
Merrill believed that the key elements of Kim's strategy were to revive the moribund North Korean economy, establish better diplomatic relations with the United States and the rest of the international community, maintain popular domestic support for his regime and arrange for a smooth transfer of power.
"So the bottom line is that I think it means that we probably have greater chance of making progress than many think," Merrill said, citing current six-nation talks aimed at disbanding North Korea's nuclear weapons programme through an aid-for-disarmament deal.
North Korea has promised to start shutting down its key nuclear plant under UN supervision under an accord reached at the six-nation talks in February.
But a dispute over the transfer of North Korean money from a Macau bank has held up implementation of the accord.
Washington says it has unfrozen the 25 million dollars but foreign banks have since been unwilling to handle the cash, which the United States had said were proceeds from money laundering and counterfeiting of US dollar bills.
On Thursday, the US-based Wachovia bank said it was considering a State Department request to oversee the transfer of frozen funds back to the financially starved regime, in an indication that the dispute was about to be settled.
Giving an upbeat prospect of the North Korean denuclearization deal at a forum hosted by the South Korean embassy Thursday, Merrill said North Korean leader Kim probably realized that nuclear weapons had become "more of an obstacle to some of the things he wants to achieve".
Kim, he said, was fighting against time to push economic reforms in his country against the backdrop of a prosperous Northeast Asian neighbourhood and to lift the living standards of his people who were "worn out by years after years of struggle and sacrifice".
The 65-year-old Kim, who like his father Kim Il-Sung has ruled the nation with an iron hand, also needs to begin putting into place arrangements for a smooth transfer of power, Merrill said.
"I would think he would want ... to do that in a situation where the new person is not faced with monumental challenges, he would like to give him a boost by settling some things, I would think," he said.
Merrill said that the junior Kim might also want to achieve a key unfulfilled ambition of his father – establish diplomatic relations with the United States.
"Kim Jong-Il has his own agenda and I think there is some confluence between his agenda and our agenda. There is a lot more to that agenda than a few nuclear weapons," Merrill said.
Under the nuclear accord, the United States will consider removing Pyongyang from its list of terrorist states and open talks on establishing diplomatic relations as it dismantles and removes its nuclear facilities.
- AFP/so
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