ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
The regime in North Korea was branded part of the Axis of Evil by President Bush in 2002, intent, he said, on arming itself with weapons of mass destruction. Well, the dismantling of those weapons will be the subject, when talks with North Korea resume this week in Beijing. In July, North Korea shut down its nuclear reactor at Nyongbyon. In exchange, North Korea has been promised fuel oil by the other members of the six-party talks: the U.S., Russia, China, Japan and South Korea. And North Korea hopes for much more.
Ambassador Christopher Hill is the lead U.S. negotiator on these talks. He's on his way to Beijing. And Ambassador Hill, what has to happen now?
Ambassador CHRISTOPHER HILL (East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Assistant Secretary of State): Well, this is going to be a fairly important week for us because we're going to sit down and try to map out the next stage of this disarming process, to take the place where they actually have made the plutonium, the place that we have shut down right now, and disable it so that it can't work for many months, maybe a year. So that's one of the things we're going to get done. And then, the second thing is we're going to discuss the timing for their providing us with a complete declaration of all their nuclear programs.
So these are two big steps. We've done a lot of preparations for them. We've had a technical team go in and have a look at the reactors. So I think we're well prepared for it, but as always, for these things, it's going to be a lot of work.
BLOCK: You mentioned the declaration part of this, where North Korea has to declare all of its nuclear programs. How confident are you that North Korea will fully disclose what it has going on, including the covert uranium enrichment program it's believed to have?
Amb. HILL: Well, you know, we've had a lot of discussions with this. We have to get full disclosure. And as always in these things, we have to have something to verify this, you know? We don't play trust me in this game. I mean, it's really a game of declarations and then verifications.
BLOCK: Ambassador Hill, just this month, there have been allegations that North Korea has been cooperating with Syria on nuclear development - exporting technology to Syria - and that led to the Israeli air strike there. Doesn't that fly in the face of any progress that you've been seeing?
Amb. HILL: Well, you know, any issues involving proliferation are very much why we're engaged in these talks in the first place, probably even a bigger concern in the possibility that they would, you know, explode a nuclear weapon with one of their neighbors. So proliferation has been a big concern. And I can assure you it'll continue to be a concern. And when we talk about shutting down programs, we really mean all programs. So we will have to pursue any and all of these issues.
BLOCK: To have that coming so closely in advance of these talks, I mean, does that complicate things when you sit down with the North Koreans if you have this issue hanging out there?
Amb. HILL: Well, again, you know, I'm not going to speak to - of particular cases, except to tell you that we've been concerned about proliferation for a long time. And as for issues complicating the talks, believe me, these talks are complicated as it is because we're dealing with a country that has willy-nilly gone ahead and proudly exploded a nuclear weapon last October. And that's why it's very important that this is not just some bilateral issue. I'd like to think that we can impress upon the North Koreans that they really have to get into another line of work.
BLOCK: It was, what, just under a year ago that the North Koreans detonated a nuclear device, and now you're heading into this latest trend of talks. How easy would it be, do you think, for this whole thing to unravel?
Mr. HILL: Well, you know, this is - it's a tough business. You know, things often go wrong, and things go wrong in ways you don't expect, and then sometimes things go right in ways you don't expect. Obviously, the detonation of that nuclear weapon was a terrible thing, and a terrible thing, you know, that on that very small part of the world, the Korean peninsula, someone's exploding a nuclear weapon.
At the same time, I think it galvanized a lot of feelings among the other parties - China, namely - and we were able to, I think, push ahead. We will have problems, and then we have to regroup and see if we can make the next step. But I think everyone should understand that at the end of the day, we are not going to tolerate a nuclear North Korea. At the end of the day, however we get to the end of the day, we need a situation where there are no more nukes on the Korean peninsula.
BLOCK: Ambassador Hill, thanks for talking with us.
Amb. HILL: Okay. Thank you very much.
BLOCK: It's Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill. He's the lead U.S. negotiator that talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament.
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