South Korea, China and Japan welcomed with relief yesterday an agreement between the US and North Korea allowing US arms inspectors access to a suspected nuclear weapons site in return for food aid.
The landmark accord will relax Cold War tensions on the Korean peninsula and help ease famine conditions in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). It could also be the first step in the eventual lifting of economic and diplomatic sanctions imposed on North Korea by the US.
The deal was announced in Washington by the US State Department, which said the first visit to the suspect underground site at Kumchang-ri will take place in May this year and a second in May 2000. There would be "multiple" visits and access would be allowed to the entire site.
North Korea has always denied the construction site had any nuclear use and had demanded compensation, including food aid, in return for American access. The US insisted it did not agree to the demands for compensation for access, other than to facilitate a private agricultural plan to improve potato production.
The Irish aid agency Concern is already helping North Koreans improve potato output and DPRK leader Mr Kim Jong Il has recently ordered the country to change its emphasis from rice to potatoes, according to a recent visitor to the capital, Pyongyang.
However, the US is also preparing to ship an unprecedented 500,000 tonnes of food aid to the starving nation on a humanitarian basis in the coming weeks, in response to an appeal from the World Food Programme. Observers believe the donation is a quid pro quo for the nuclear inspections.
Up to now, China was the only country supplying direct food aid to the Stalinist country which has suffered severe crop failures in the last four years. The Republican-controlled US Congress would be critical of any deal whereby the US yielded to North Korea's demand for food aid in return for inspections. A US policy review on North Korea is due to be completed next month by Mr William Perry, a former US defence secretary, and the agreement on inspections will strengthen the White House case for engagement rather than simply military deterrence.
The breakthrough in US-North Korea relations was reached in New York by US special envoy Mr Charles Kartman, and North Korean vice Foreign Minister Mr Kim Gye Gwanon on Monday, the 12th day of the fourth round of talks between the Cold War adversaries which have been going on for seven months. It dramatically lessens the prospect of US military action against North Korea, which US analysts said was the option of final resort to meet a North Korean nuclear threat. It will calm fears raised in South Korea and Japan by the firing of a missile into the Sea of Japan last August. North Korea claimed at the time it was putting a satellite into orbit.
The deal could also jump-start the stalled 1994 agreement under which North Korea said it would freeze and dismantle its graphite-moderated nuclear reactor programme at Yongbyon in exchange for two light-water reactors and 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil a year from the US and its allies until one reactor was working. The 1994 agreement is under the auspices of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO), and also involves Japan.
Construction at the suspect site came to light in August 1998 when US spy satellite photographs showed thousands of workers digging into a mountain 40 km north-west of Yongbyon. The US Congress had threatened to stop the oil supplies unless US inspections were allowed. Sources in Beijing said the North Koreans have recently discovered oil and are anxious to acquire technology to extract it.
China welcomed the accord yesterday. "We believe this will help ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and improve ties between North Korea and the United States," a spokesman said in Beijing.
The Chinese Premier, Mr Zhu Rongji, hinted on Tuesday that China was involved behind the scenes. Reacting to US media claims that Beijing was not doing enough to help, he retorted: "How can you know that?" South Korea, which is pursuing a "sunshine" policy of economic co-operation with the North, greeted the "desirable settlement", but a foreign ministry spokesman said Seoul "expects the North to fully comply with the latest agreement, thereby completely dispelling suspicion over the Kumchang-ri site".
South Korean sources said on Monday that US intelligence had spotted trucks going in and out of the Kumchang-ri facility, which may be removing evidence. "Opening a negotiated path to a solution to the suspected underground facility is very favourable for future relations between the countries concerned, including Japan and North Korea," the Japanese Foreign Minister, Mr Masahiko Komura, said.
Tokyo has voiced strong concerns about security since the North Korea missile-firing last year and says sanctions will only be lifted if there is major change in Pyonyang policy. The Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Keizo Obuchi, warned on Saturday that the Japanese parliament is not likely to approve payment of its share in KEDO if the inspections proved unsatisfactory.
US officials will visit Pyongyang on March 29th for talks on US concerns over North Korea's missile production and sales. In June last year North Korea vowed to continue to develop, test and deploy missiles, and said that US economic sanctions had forced it to export missiles to raise funds.
North Korea said on Friday it would make no concessions on its missile programme and accused Washington of trying to press for military dominance of Asia. "The US is mistaken if it thinks that it can `check' the DPRK missile development through `co-operation' with other countries, and it should not dream that kind of dream," a North Korea Foreign Ministry spokesman said.