Tuesday 27 August 2013

SIX-WAY TALKS

Yonhap

10 YEARS AFTER LAUNCH, SIX-WAY TALKS REMAIN EFFECTIVE TOOL TO DENUKE NORTH

Yonhap, August 27, 2013

SEOUL. Aug. 27 (Yonhap) -- Ten years after the six-party talks' launch, the multilateral dialogue has fallen short of disarming North Korea, but the now long-stalled talks are still seen as an effective tool to denuclearize the communist country, analysts said Tuesday.

On Aug. 27, 2003, six nations - the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan -- opened their first negotiations in Beijing in multilateral efforts to end the North's nuclear program, deemed a security threat to the region.

The advent of the six-party talks followed escalating security concerns surrounding the reclusive North's growing nuclear capacities.

Amid rising U.S. allegations that the North started an illegal enriched uranium weapons program, the North withdrew in January 2003 from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, an international treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, triggering anxieties among neighbors over the North's nuclear ambitions.

Washington's previous attempts to denuclearize the North also ended in failure when the North defaulted in 2002 on the Agreed Framework, under which the North agreed in 1994 with the U.S. to freeze its plutonium-producing nuclear facilities.

(...) [article here]

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