Press Briefing
with

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

Christopher R. Hill

Friday, August 31, 2007

Hotel de La Paix
Geneva, Switzerland

 

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  It’s a great pleasure to be here in Geneva.  It’s really one of the world’s great cities with one of the sort of great traditions in diplomacy, and we’re very grateful for the Swiss authorities for helping to organize this.

This will be a two-day meeting of the U.S. DPRK working group.  This is in the framework of five working groups that are called for in the February ’07 agreement.  For us it’s an important working group because it allows us to really prepare for the next plenary session, Six-Party plenary session, and I think it also allows the U.S. and DPRK to make progress on our relationship.

As President Bush said yesterday, there has been progress on the denuclearization of DPRK, but we have some unfinished business to do.  Certainly the month of September will be an important month because, in addition to completing the working groups with the U.S.-DPRK working group this weekend and then the DPRK-Japan working group next week, we would hope to get back to a Six-Party plenary and figure out the sequencing of the next steps -- which is the disablement of the nuclear facilities and the full declaration of all nuclear programs and facilities and materials that the DPRK has.

This is -- I think I would call this phase two, with phase one having been the shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear facilities there.  So phase two, I think, is an ambitious task -- but a very necessary task on the road toward complete denuclearization.

We are hopeful -- and indeed we’ve had some very good working groups, especially the denuclearization working group that took place in Shenyang just a couple of weeks ago in China -- we are hopeful that we can come up with an implementation arrangement for the disablement and declaration of facilities, that we could by the end of this year have accomplished this phase two.  Then in the opening of ’08 we would begin what I would hope would be the final stage, which is the abandonment of the fissile material -- that is, the nuclear material already produced -- the abandonment of weapons in which the fissile material is, the convening of a peace conference with respect to the Korean Peninsula to turn the armistice into a genuine peace agreement; and finally the convening of the Northeast Asian peace and security mechanism, an effort to begin to create a sense of neighborhood in Northeast Asia.  And all the while that we’re doing this, we would continue to make progress on the U.S.-DPRK normalization agreement, such that we could eventually have complete normalization in our relationship.

So all of that I think is going in the next 24 hours here in Geneva, so we’re looking forward to it.

QUESTION:  Do you think North Korea could be removed from the list of terrorist countries even before its full denuclearization?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  We have been working, as you know, from the February agreement.  We have committed to start that process.  We had some discussions about it in our previous working group, and we’ll be discussing it again today -- tomorrow, rather.  And we will be figuring out at what stage that could be done.  So I’m not prepared to say precisely when it could be done at this point, but obviously it’s an important issue with respect to our working group.

QUESTION:  Would you be so kind as to tell us something about the chemistry of those within the working group at the moment?  How are you communicating –

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  We get along great.  You mean chemistry within my team?  Within –
QUESTION:  Between the Americans and the North Koreans.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  We’ll meet them tomorrow morning, so we can tell you after the first day. 

QUESTION:  But you've been setting up this meeting, et cetera.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  And we’ve been meeting quite a lot, actually, since 2005.  I can’t be the one to just describe the chemistry.  I think you need two to describe the chemistry.  From our point of view it’s been very businesslike.  We have, I think, been able to have some clarity about our objectives here.

I think it’s very important that each party understands what the other party needs to get out of a process.  So I think to do that you have to get to know each other and you have to I think have these face to face contacts, which we’ve done.

But what I want to stress is that we have embarked on a Six-Party process because this is not just a U.S. problem or a U.S.-DPRK bilateral problem.  This is a problem for the region.  And I think if you take an even wider angle view of it, you’ll see this is really, I think, a fundamental problem in the region that requires, I think, the building of a greater sense of neighborhood.  And that involves building relations not only between the DPRK and the U.S., but also between the DPRK and other countries and between some of those other countries.

So that is why we are trying to address some of the underlying causes of tension in the region.  And we hope that at the end of this process, with the creation of a Northeast Asian peace and security mechanism -- which is one of our working groups and which the Russian Federation has been working very hard to organize and to ensure that it will be a success when it meets -- I hope that at the end we will have not only dealt with the terrible problem of nuclear weapons, but also the problem of making sure that this neighborhood produces not only some of the world’s finest products but also Northeast Asia can produce also peace and security.

QUESTION:  Are you going to raise the issue of the Japanese abduction case?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  The Japanese abduction issue, as I’ve said many times, is an issue of great importance to the Japanese government and the Japanese people.  Anyone who has been in Japan knows that.  But I want to stress it’s also an issue of great importance to the American Government and the American people.  So I have raised it before, and I’ll continue to raise it.  This is an issue that needs to be resolved, and I think it needs to be resolved in the context of addressing a DPRK-Japan relationship.  And that’s what their working group is about.

So I have continued to be in very close contact with my counterpart, Mr. Kenichiro Sasae.  And I look forward when I leave here to going to Sydney and briefing the Japanese delegation, who will be there in APEC, on aspects of our bilateral meeting that could be relevant to their bilateral meeting which I think comes up on Wednesday.

QUESTION:  Why don’t you apply the same method that you’re applying to North Korea to the Middle East and start talks to denuclearize the region, especially that there you need also peace and security for all countries?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I handle East Asia.  I handle a number of situations in East Asia.  I’m handling this one.  I think in diplomacy you realize that rarely does one size fit all, that you have different situations, different historical antecedents to all these situations.  And so you have to in many respects improvise in all these situations.  So I’m not prepared to say that the process we have going with the DPRK is one that’s applicable to every other situation in the world.

Let’s see how we do with this.  Then let’s see if there are things in this process that can be used elsewhere.  Believe me, we have a lot of unfinished business.

QUESTION:  Why can’t it be applied to other regions in the world?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I don’t know.  Maybe it can, maybe it can’t.  But I’m not prepared at this point to say that our Six-Party process is one that needs to be done elsewhere.  In diplomacy issues are -- you have different historical backgrounds to problems, and you cannot expect that one size will fit all.

QUESTION:  I understand you’re in close contact with all of the parties addressing the abduction issue.

HILL:  Yes.

QUESTION:  I want to know what you can suggest as possible resolutions to this.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Look, I’m not going to suggest – We have had discussions about all this, but I’m really not prepared to offer my thoughts on that through the press.  I will say that we are in very close contact with the parties on this, and we want to see a resolution of this issue.  But I am not really prepared to do it here.

QUESTION:  Any preliminary meeting?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  No, we start tomorrow morning.  I know that when I -- Usually I don’t come so early, but I just couldn’t get a flight that would get me in at 7:30 in the morning.

QUESTION:  President Bush told the Asian press in an interview that he wouldn’t forget the abduction issue.  Does that mean that the United States will not remove North Korea off the list of terrorism sponsors unless there is a clear resolution to this?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I think the President’s words speak for themselves.  I’m not going to interpret the President’s words for him.

QUESTION:  (Inaudible) the timing and the location in consideration besides the bilateral context, is there a message from this meeting to the Iranians?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Again, as I tried to answer the question earlier, we have a tough situation in Northeast Asia.  This nuclear issue is a tough one.  We’re trying to solve it the best way we can.  If there are lessons to be learned, if there are positive lessons, that’s excellent.  But I would caution against people thinking that you can take one solution and use it everywhere.

The lesson I hope that people would take is that these nuclear weapons really need to be done away with.  These are, as I’ve said many times, these are programs that are not helping the DPRK.  In fact they’re driving the DPRK into a deeper sense of isolation, which we’re trying to reverse.  And I hope other countries who have had aspirations in this regard would understand that nuclear weapons are not a security solution, and they certainly don’t help anyone’s future.

QUESTION:  What needs to happen this weekend for you to consider it a success?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I’ll know it when I see it.

QUESTION:  Do you have anything you’re hoping will –

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  I want to make sure that when we get to the -- Let me back up.  We had some very good discussions in the denuclearization working group, and it’s my hope that we will see that we have a basis for going to the plenary meeting -- which we anticipate will be in Beijing sometime in the early part of September -- and that we will have a basis for reaching an agreement on the implementation of a declaration and disablement.  I think I’ll have a better idea about the chances for success of that in the next meeting after these two days.

Obviously this is a working group that’s aimed at addressing the U.S.-DPRK relationship, and we have some elements in that relationship that we’d like to see progress on.

So I think after two days I’ll have a sense of whether we’re moving ahead.  Again, I’ve said many times that with denuclearization a lot of things are possible, but without it we’re not going to get very far.

QUESTION:  Mr. Secretary, I was wondering if your North Korean counterparts are trying to frontload prospects of a peace agreement before a final package?  And secondly, if you could elaborate a bit on the expected burden-sharing from allies in the region on any economic compensation package for the North Koreans?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  As you know, we currently have a compensation package with respect to this heavy fuel oil.  Four countries in the Six-Party process are participants in that – China, Russia, the U.S., and South Korea.  Japan has said it will be a participant when its issues are addressed. 

We have also kept the door open to other countries who may want to participate.  So we are very interested in other countries joining in this.  And for that reason we have really been very active in briefing other countries on the process and, in effect, seeing if other countries can make contributions to this – because we consider the Six-Party process not to be a sort of closed loop, but rather a platform in which we hope that all countries can see what we’re trying to do and can contribute to it.

So on the other part of your question, I think when you have a negotiation, each side likes to frontload the other side’s obligations.  You know, we certainly do a little of that ourselves.  I think that will just come out in the negotiating process.  We basically have a principle of you do something, we’ll do something.  That’s the fun and the burden of negotiation, figuring out the sequence of various obligations. 

I don’t know why I said it’s fun, because it really isn’t.  [Laughter]. 

QUESTION:  You said the Japanese abduction issue is important also for the United States.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Yes.

QUESTION:  In what ways other than Japan just being a good ally, in what ways is it important to the United States, and do you think it’s going to affect the whole denuclearization?  How do you think it’s going to affect the whole denuclearization?

HILL:  Obviously it’s an impediment in any normalization of DPRK-Japan relations. So there are other impediments of course, but I think this abduction issue is an issue that the Japanese public is very keenly aware of.  I think, fundamentally, this is a case of one state abducting the citizens of another state.  That has sort of broader ramifications.  And therefore I think any state that has engaged in that practice really needs to come clean and explain what precisely happened, what has happened to the individuals, a full explanation of it.  I think any state that is engaged in this also needs to give pretty clear assurances this sort of thing won’t happen again.

So it does go beyond the question of DPRK-Japan.  I think it goes to the very fundamental question of how states behave toward one another.  But it’s certainly been an impediment here, but I hope that it can be addressed.  I think everyone understands it needs to be addressed.  So let’s see how we do in the next few weeks.

QUESTION:  Is it possible to be discussed about uranium enrichment program program and light water reactor?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  Certainly we feel that we need to make progress on uranium enrichment.  This came up in the denuclearization working group in Shenyang.  Any declaration of nuclear programs has to involve all nuclear programs, and  so uranium enrichment would be one of them.

With respect to the light water reactor issue, that’s addressed in the September ’05 agreement, and I think the position of my government is pretty well known on that -- which is, we’re prepared to have a discussion on that when the DPRK returns to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

QUESTION:  The North Koreans maintain they will not disable or declare unless U.S. lifts the sanctions and remove them from the list.  Are you ready to sequence those issues with their obligations?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL:  We’re going to have some discussions about all of those things, but I’m not prepared to tell you precisely what we’re prepared to do.

All right?  Go out and enjoy the weather.  What a place.

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