DPRK NUCLEAR PROGRAMS: GOR REACTION TO NON-PAPER

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 003979 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/08/2017 TAGS: PREL MNUC KNNP KN KS CH JP RS SUBJECT: DPRK NUCLEAR PROGRAMS: GOR REACTION TO NON-PAPER REF: STATE 105500 Classified By: A/POL Colin Cleary. Reasons 1.4(B/D) ¶1. (C) Grigoriy Berdennikov, the GOR's representative to the Six-Party First Working Group -- Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula -- told us that the GOR, in principle, agrees with reftel non-paper. However, Berdennikov underlined that the paper should serve not as the starting point, but as the end product of the Working Group (WG)'s long negotiations. Berdennikov, who spent seven years in Vienna as the GOR's envoy to the IAEA and UN, predicted that if the paper were presented at the WG meeting in Shenyang, August 16-17, "the show would stop immediately." ¶2. (C) At the July Beijing Plenary, the DPRK chief negotiator for the Six-Party Talks rejected a proposal that the North be obliged to declare all nuclear weapon programs as part of the February 13 agreement. According to Berdennikov, a demand for the immediate and complete transparency on all programs would be unrealistic. The GOR's position is a stage-by-stage approach covering simple to more "intrusive" areas. ¶3. (C) Berdennikov noted that the August 16-17 session will be, in fact, the first with any substance. He recalled that, with the Six-Party process stalemated and the DPRK refusing to discuss its nuclear programs, the first WG session in Beijing in February had "amounted to nothing." For this reason, Berdennikov thought, nobody knows how the session should progress. He noted that the U.S. paper was the only document that the GOR received on the WG. ¶4. (C) According to Berdennikov, the WG session should try to build on the momentum created by a series of "good events" -- including the IAEA team's visit to the North, the closure of the five DPRK nuclear facilities and the imminent South-North Korean summit. For this session, the GOR hopes to achieve an agreement on "what needs to be declared," and some level of understanding on "disablement." He noted that the "strategic ambiguity" introduced by the new term, "disablement," rather than the conventional "dismantlement," may give the North more bargaining room. "Irreversible" disablement, he said, will predictably lead to the North's demand for a light water reactor. RUSSELL