The art of compromise
The joint statement by the six parties on the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula is a welcome breakthrough after two years of frustrating negotiations. It is a tribute to China's perseverance and its ability to bridge differences between the United States and North Korea by unceasingly looking for acceptable compromises.
China had failed in previous rounds of talks to get all six parties to agree on a statement of principles and had to resort to issuing only a chairman's statement. The joint statement this time sets out what the various parties are prepared to do to defuse the nuclear issue, with North Korea committing itself to 'abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programmes'. It shows that the Chinese approach - without using threats of military action or economic sanctions - can be successful if the US is willing to take Pyongyang's economic and security concerns into consideration.
However, the joint statement is in effect an agreement in principle and will need to be fleshed out in more rounds of negotiations.
The fragility of the situation was shown by the fact that North Korea issued a statement yesterday saying that it would not give up its nuclear weapons until Washington provided civilian atomic reactors.
The North Korean announcement did not repudiate the joint statement issued in Beijing the previous day, but it suggests that a lot of hard work remains before the agreement in principle can be implemented.
If the six parties had failed to agree to anything this time, it would have jeopardised the whole negotiating process. Fortunately, the US and North Korea were sufficiently flexible to agree to mutually acceptable wording.
Chinese diplomats had worked round the clock to draft and redraft the six-point statement until, as US representative Christopher Hill put it: 'Everyone can almost recite it from memory at this point.'
What held up an agreement last time was North Korea's insistence on its right to operate a civilian nuclear energy programme and its demand for a light-water reactor. Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, the US promised to provide North Korea with two light-water reactors by 2003, but the agreement fell through.
The American position until last week was that Pyongyang could not be trusted with a nuclear generator even if it was only for electricity.
But now Washington has made a concession by not objecting to North Korea's assertion in the joint statement of its 'right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy'. North Korea, too, had to make a concession by accepting that the five other parties 'agreed to discuss at an appropriate time the subject of the provision of a light-water reactor to the [North]'.
America had originally insisted on the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons programmes before it would discuss economic aid. However, Pyongyang presented the formula of 'words for words' and 'action for action'.
This approach is reflected in the joint statement, which says: 'The six parties agreed to take co-ordinated steps ... in a phased manner in line with the principle of 'commitment for commitment, action for action'.' The statement can be considered an expression of 'commitment for commitment'. Now, the various commitments need to be implemented.
The next round of six-party talks is scheduled for November and it is likely that further rounds will be needed to reach detailed agreement on all issues. In that process, serious problems may still emerge.
For one thing, the US accuses North Korea of having a secret programme of using highly enriched uranium to produce nuclear weapons, an accusation that Pyongyang rejects. It remains to be seen how this major difference will be overcome.
Frank Ching is a Hong Kong-based writer and commentator
