WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the top U.S. nuclear negotiator visited North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor today, Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA), released a letter from the State Department clarifying that any agreement to remove North Korea from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism will not lead to construction of new nuclear reactors in that country. Prior reports detailing the Six-Party talks over North Korea’s nuclear program, had indicated that such a “delisting” would allow construction of Light Water Reactors offered to North Korea in 1994 to resume.
“I am very pleased that the Bush administration has made clear that even removal of North Korea from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list will not allow North Korea to resurrect the failed light water reactors deal from 1994. Any plan to transfer nuclear technology or material to North Korea ought to be completely off the table during the current negotiations,” said Rep. Markey, co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force on Non-Proliferation.
“North Korea has a proven track record as a nuclear weapons proliferator, and it simply cannot be trusted with such technologies and materials.”
The State Department’s letter is in response to detailed questions Rep. Markey had submitted to the agency. The response states, “Such nuclear cooperation is not the goal or intent of the Six-Party process. In addition, even if the designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism were removed, significant legal barriers to nuclear cooperation with North Korea would remain, including several sanctions laws.”
Rep. Markey and then-Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) authored two provisions of the 2005 Energy Policy Act to restrict nuclear exports to countries listed as Sponsors of Terrorism. Section 632 of that law bars all nuclear transfers to countries currently on the list, and Section 635 prohibits U.S. indemnification of the design, construction, or operation of nuclear facilities for any country that was on the list as of September 11, 2001. Removing North Korea from the list would lift the Markey-Cox Section 632 ban on nuclear transfers; however, the Section 635 prohibition on U.S. indemnification would remain in full effect.
“When it was being debated in 1994, I believed that the Agreed Framework’s promise of new reactors for North Korea was a bad idea, and everything that has occurred since then has only strengthened my conviction that North Korea cannot be trusted with nuclear technology. We should not disable North Korea’s existing nuclear bomb factory only to build another one, and I am glad that the Bush Administration has acknowledged that the legal barriers to doing so extend far beyond North Korea's listing as a State Sponsor of Terrorism,” Rep. Markey concluded.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill is currently in North Korea, where he met with North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun and visited the Yongbyon complex, north of Pyongyang, today. Hill is the highest-level U.S. official to visit the complex.
Rep. Markey's letter to the State Department
| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 4, 2007 |
CONTACT: Jessica Schafer, 202.225.2836 |
