North Korea's move on Thursday to declare details of its nuclear programme brought the country one step closer to becoming only the world's third nation, after South Africa and Libya, to dismantle a nuclear weapons programme, according to dpa. The long-awaited move, in which China led the mediations, has been anticipated for months. "We are at the cusp of something very special here," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in February of the possibility that North Korea could finally implement an agreement on disabling and dismantling its nuclear programme. Rice was speaking at a joint press conference with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, one month after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told Chinese officials in Pyongyang that his country would honour its commitments under the six-nation agreement between North Korea, the United States, China, South Korea, Russia and Japan. While China has downplayed its role in the issue, the joint appearance of the two foreign ministers spoke otherwise, and even US President George W Bush Thursday strongly praised China for its "robust" involvement in the talks. Kim's promise came despite North Korea's missing an agreed deadline to disclose full details of its nuclear programmes by the end of last year. Last week, Kim told visiting Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, the heir apparent to Hu Jintao, that the six-party negotiations had "reached a lot of important agreements," Chinese state media said. The North Korean leader also said China had played a "very important role" as the host country for the talks and said he hoped North Korea and China would continue their "good cooperation" in the nuclear negotiations. Thursday's declaration came six months late, but time has not been crucial in five years of sensitive negotiations. North Korea initially demanded direct bilateral talks with the United States, a position at first supported by China. But China later got involved, persuading North Korea to accept the six-party format and facilitating the first bilateral talks within that framework, arranging a series of sessions between each of the nations and every other one. Over the five years, the momentum of the largely closed six-nation process appears to have turned on crucial bilateral meetings between US and North Korean officials within and even outside the six-nation framework. The visit to Pyongyang in June last year by Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator, was seen as cementing that trend. The US envoy held several bilateral meetings with his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye Gwan over the past year, mostly in Beijing. Hill said the six-nation talks in July last year, when he had at least two meetings with Kim Kye Gwan, were the "best" he had attended. Qi Baoliang of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations told the Chinese government's official Xinhua news agency that a "flurry" of diplomatic contacts between the United States and North Korea had helped bring about Thursday's declaration. The agency said ties were also softened by the visit to Pyongyang in February by the New York Philharmonic, the highest-level cultural exchange since the 1950-53 Korean War. Current US-North Korean relations were "the best in decades", Qi said. Other Chinese analysts have downplayed the role of their nation in persuading North Korea to continue dialogue, arguing that it retained only limited influence over its communist neighbour and Korean War ally. But US President George W Bush praised China's role in coaxing North Korea into cooperation, hailing Thursday's declaration but warning that it was only the "first step" in dismantling a complex network of sanctions against the isolated communist regime. The US said there was "still more work to be done in order for North Korea to end its isolation." "It must dismantle all of its nuclear facilities, give up its separated plutonium, and resolve outstanding questions on its highly enriched uranium and proliferation activities," the White House said. North Korea's refusal to admit to running a uranium-enrichment programme, in addition to a plutonium-based programme, has been a major sticking point in the negotiations. Xinhua said a seventh round of six-party talks was likely to begin in the next few weeks. "But denuclearization still needs more breakthroughs over many thorny issues," it said in a commentary. Several issues of contention between Washington and Pyongyang could still "slow down or even reverse the disarmament" which was likely to be a "very long and exhausting process", the agency said. But one expert from China's ruling Communist Party said the planned destruction on Friday of the cooling tower at North Korea's main Yongbyon reactor would be of "great symbolic significance" in the denuclearization process. "The cooling tower has been out of function since the disablement of the Yongbyon (reactor) last year," said Zhang Liangui from the Central Party School. "But its destruction holds great symbolic significance," Zhang told the agency. Zhang said the submission of the declaration was "a pivotal step on the process of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which makes a sound atmosphere for the further talks".
