Pat Dollard | Young Americans

WASHINGTON, April 19 - (Kyodo)—U.S. President George W. Bush and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak stood united Saturday in urging North Korea to provide a full accounting of its nuclear activities in a manner which can scrutinized by other countries.
After a summit at the Camp David presidential retreat just outside Washington, at a joint news conference they vowed to pull together to advance six-party talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear program, saying it is intolerable for North Korea to continue possessing its nuclear arsenal.

Bush said that to move forward the six-way talks, North Korea must reveal all details of its nuclear intentions in line with its promise with the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

“North Korea must fulfill its other obligations to provide a full declaration of its nuclear programs and proliferation activities in a verifiable way,” he said.

Bush also said, “The whole objective of the six-party talks and framework is to get them to disclose their weapons programs, to get them to dismantle their plutonium processing, to get them to talk about activities.”

While noting the North Koreans “may be trying to stall,” he said, “The key thing is that we have not abandoned efforts to solve this problem peacefully and diplomatically.”

Lee, who met Bush for the first time since taking office in February, said, “Both of us reaffirmed once again that under no circumstances would we allow North Korea to possess nuclear weapons.”

“And we agreed to work together closely within the six-party talks so that North Korea can fully give up their program as soon as possible,” Lee said.

Washington is anxious to see the six-party process make further strides and for North Korea’s denuclearization activities to be completed before Bush ends his second four-year term in January 2009.

North Korea is disabling its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, north of its capital, under a six-way deal reached last year in return for energy aid and diplomatic benefits.

The United States has said it will remove Pyongyang from its list of terror-sponsoring countries and exempt it from the Trading with the Enemy Act as the denuclearization process moves forward.

But the six-party negotiations stalled after North Korea failed to provide a satisfactory account of its nuclear programs by the deadline set by the six countries.

According to diplomatic sources, the United States and North Korea agreed in Singapore earlier this month to resolve a dispute over Pyongyang’s alleged enrichment of weapons-grade uranium and suspicions that North Korea has shared nuclear technology with countries such as Syria.

The remaining sticking points surround the information pertaining to Pyongyang’s plutonium-based nuclear programs and nuclear facilities other than those in Yongbyon.

Bush said Washington’s possible decision to cross North Korea off the terror blacklist is contingent upon the substance of any declaration by Pyongyang and its verifiability.

“We will make a full decision about our obligations depending upon whether or not we are convinced that there is a solid declaration and whether there’s a way to verify it,” he said.

The current phase of denuclearization obliges North Korea to declare and disable all its nuclear programs. It is to be followed by the third and final phase in which Pyongyang must give up all its fissile material.

Elsewhere, Bush and Lee said they agreed to freeze a plan to gradually reduce the number of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and maintain it at the current 28,500.

Under a bilateral agreement reached in 2004, the United States was scheduled to reduce the number of forces stationed in South Korea to 25,000 by the end of this year.

They also agreed to do their utmost to get a U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement to be ratified by the respective countries’ legislatures by the end of this year. The trade deal was struck a year ago.

Lee, South Korea’s first president to be invited to Camp David, said Bush agreed to accept his invitation to visit South Korea, possibly around July, when Bush will attend a Group of Eight summit in the Lake Toya resort area of Hokkaido, Japan.

(AP)