North Korea nuclear deal comes wrapped in ambiguity

BEIJING (Reuters) - A disarmament pact sealed this week takes North Korea a step closer to abandoning its nuclear arms ambitions, and yet it bears potentially deal-breaking ambiguities that negotiators have until now held at bay.

One year after Pyongyang drew international censure with its first nuclear test, it is basking in unfamiliar diplomatic warmth after hosting a summit with South Korea and accepting a disarmament deadline hammered out at six-party talks in Beijing.

Under the deal announced by talks host China on Wednesday, Pyongyang will "disable" three main facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear complex and declare all nuclear activities by December 31 -- potentially momentous steps towards full atomic dismantlement.

But what the negotiators have previously called a "road-map" turns out to be a 700-word sketch as telling for what it leaves unclear as for what it spells out.

Uncertainties over disablement and declaration steps and the fate of North Korea's demands for light-water nuclear reactors -- originally promised in a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration -- could delay, damage and even derail efforts to fully end Pyongyang's nuclear arms program, analysts said.

"There is a reason why we have the saying 'the devil is in the details'. And with the North Koreans, that saying goes in spades," said Joel Wit of Columbia University, who formerly worked in the U.S. State Department negotiating with North Korea.

"I would say it's a baby step towards denuclearization. Useful and certainly better than what we had before but extremely limited," he said.

FORTRESS STATE

For now, even long-time foe Washington has cast aside criticism of communist North Korea to hail hopes of bringing the isolated fortress state into the international fold.

The deal builds on a February agreement offering energy-famished Pyongyang one million metric tons of heavy fuel oil or equivalent aid in return for disabling Yongbyon and for disclosing all other nuclear activities.

Just a year ago, the future of the six-party talks was clouded. The fitful discussions between North and South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan had meandered since August 2003 without a breakthrough.

But Pyongyang's test blast on October 9 last year focused diplomatic energies and the U.S. negotiator, Christopher Hill, opened substantive two-way talks with North Korea that laid the groundwork for the February agreement.

Yet negotiating with North Korea -- secretive and wary of the West after decades of confrontation -- has never been easy, and key pieces of the disarmament puzzle remain in delicate diplomatic ambiguity.

"He may think he is gradually boxing them in, but being vague can also be dangerous," said Wit.

Among the issues left unclear are just how the Yongbyon facilities will be "disabled" -- crippled so North Korea would find it difficult to restart them.

There is also plenty of room for contention over Pyongyang's agreement to disclose all nuclear activities by the end of the year, especially over efforts at uranium enrichment and the history and size of its plutonium stockpile.

"There is the big possibility that North Korea really doesn't want to abandon nuclear weapons and so its declaration won't be fully candid," said Zhang Liangui, an expert on the nuclear dispute at the Central Party School in Beijing.

"The year-end deadline risks haste not thoroughness."

Getting the deal done before the end of the year could be good timing for outgoing South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, whose liberal allies face a drubbing in December elections. It could also be claimed as a big achievement for U.S. President George W. Bush's administration as it heads into its last year.

ENRICHMENT?

In 2002, the United States accused the North of seeking to master enrichment as an alternative source of fissile material for nuclear arms, intensifying confrontation that led to the breakdown of the 1994 disarmament agreement.

The North has denied pursuing enrichment. Conservative critics of the deal in Washington could seize on uncertainty about enrichment to challenge the deal, said Selig Harrison of the Woodrow Wilson Centre, a think-tank in Washington D.C.

Looming over these areas of potential dispute is North Korea's demand for light-water nuclear reactors.

Under the defunct 1994 accord, the United States agreed to help provide the North two such reactors, which are much less capable of producing weapons-usable plutonium than the graphite-based reactors operating at Yongbyon.

The light-water reactor sites now lie abandoned along with the 1994 deal. The United States has repeatedly deflected North Korean demands to agree to finish them, wary of giving Pyongyang any nuclear capability and agreeing only to talk about the issue at some later date.

But recently North Korea has reminded others that its demand for the reactors remains a key demand down the road.

"Informed North Korean sources have told me that North Korea would not dispose of any fissile material until the other parties commit to resuming help to completing the light-water reactors," Harrison said.

Wit said addressing the light-water reactor demand remained crucial to dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons capability.

"Without that, we aren't going to get from here to there," he said.