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WASHINGTON : A mechanism is being set up to scrutinize any declaration North Korea provides on its nuclear weapons programme under a six-nation aid-for-denuclearization deal, the State Department said Wednesday.
"That's something that will be handled in the verification subgroup" of the six-party talks, department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters when asked about possible "verification methods" for North Korea's nuclear programme under the multilateral effort to end Pyongyang's atomic weapons drive.
The verification mechanism is expected to be set up under the "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula" working group, one of five groups set up under a February 2007 agreement among the six parties.
"It's a new effort. It's something that has been integrated into the talks, and I guess, as a bureaucratic grouping, then organized within the context of those talks," McCormack said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had discussed the establishment of the verification mechanism with leaders of China as well as other countries, a State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The announcement of the verification mechanism Wednesday came amid criticism of a tentative deal reportedly reached earlier this month between US and North Korean envoys for the hardline communist state to declare its nuclear programme.
Under the deal, North Korea would provide a list of its plutonium stockpile but will merely "acknowledge" concerns listed by the United States about its suspected uranium enrichment and nuclear proliferation activities, reports have said.
North Korea had missed a December 31, 2007 deadline for providing a full declaration of its nuclear programme and proliferation activities, delaying implementation of its denuclearization drive that Washington wants completed before President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009.
Although the latest deal may have broken the months-old deadlock, it has caused a great deal of skepticism among Korean and other experts.
John Bolton, a former State Department non-proliferation chief, said the deal "rests on trust and not verification" and warned that Pyongyang's "escape from accountability could break down international counter-proliferation efforts."
But Rice said last week that any declaration from North Korea had to be "verified and it has to be verifiable.
"And we have to make certain that we have means to assess what the North Koreans tell us, and we have to have means to verify what the North Koreans tell us," she said.
- AFP/ir
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