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Kim Jong Il: We Want Clinton Nuke Deal
Negotiators for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il insisted on Wednesday that the U.S. honor ex-President Clinton's promise to give them a nuclear reactor in exchange for giving up their nuclear weapons program.
But the Bush administration quickly nixed the idea.
After his first one-on-one meeting with the North Korean delegation during talks on their nuclear program, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters: "We did not make a lot of progress."
The North Korean regime is demanding the kind of light-water nuclear reactor promised by Clinton under a 1994 deal dubbed the "Agreed Framework" - and pledged they won't use it to make nuclear weapons.
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But Hill noted that North Korea has pursued a nuclear program for 25 years and used it solely to make weapons-grade plutonium for atomic bombs - not for generating electricity.
The North was slated to get two such reactors under the Clinton plan. Other assistance promised by the U.S. at the time would have turned Pyongyang into the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the Pacific rim.
The Agreed Framework collapsed, however, in late 2002, when Kim Jong Il's government admitted it was making nuclear bombs. "As it turns out, they were cheating," Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright later explained.
Under the Bush administration's proposal, North Korea would receive economic aid and security guarantees from Washington along with free electricity from South Korea in exchange for dismantling its nuclear weapons program. Editor's note:
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