North Korea misses declaration deadline

[Korea Times, Financial Times, 1 January] North Korea failed to meet a 31 December deadline to declare details of its nuclear programs. Under a multinational agreement reached in February 2007, North Korea agreed that by the end of 2007 it would disable its Yongbyon reactor and present a list of all its nuclear programs in return for economic aid and political concessions. The Yongbyon reactor was shut down in July 2007 and work to disable the facility is underway. The delay with disabling Yongbyon appears to be mainly due to technical issues. To extract and remove some 8000 fuel rods at the reactor could simply not be done safely by the end of 2007. South Korea, Japan and the USA, while expressing disappointment that North Korea had failed to submit a declaration of its nuclear programs as promised, have urged the country to do so as soon as possible. Tom Casey, a spokesman for the US State Department, said: "The important thing is not whether we have the declaration by today or not. The important thing is that we get a declaration that meets the requirements of the agreement, which means it needs to be full and complete." He added, "We've seen these kinds of delays and other things occur in the process as we move along, and in some cases, you almost have to expect those kinds of things to happen, given the difficulty and the nature of what we are trying to do."

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