Political Economist

BEIJING, Sept. 19 - North Korea agreed to end its nuclear weapons program this morning in return for security, economic and energy benefits, potentially easing tensions with the United States after a three-year standoff over the country's efforts to build atomic bombs.

The United States, North Korea and four other nations participating in nuclear negotiations in Beijing signed a draft accord in which Pyongyang promised to abandon efforts to produce nuclear weapons and re-admit international inspectors to its nuclear facilities. Foreign powers said they would provide aid, diplomatic assurances and security guarantees and consider North Korea's demands for a light-water nuclear reactor.

The agreement is a preliminary one that would require future rounds of negotiations to flesh out, as it does not address a number of issues, like timing and implementation, that are likely to prove highly contentious. China announced that the six nations participating in the talks would reconvene in November to continue ironing out the details.

Even so, the agreement marks the first time since the United States accused North Korea of violating a previous accord in 2002 that the two countries have drawn up a road map for ending their dispute through peaceful means.

It also appears to rescue a diplomatic process that appeared to be on the verge of collapse after multiple rounds of negotiations failed to produce even a joint statement of principles. The Bush administration had said it was prepared to take tougher measures, including freezing North Korean assets abroad and pushing for international sanctions, if the latest round of talks collapsed.

"The problem is not yet solved but we hope it can be solved eventually through this agreement," said Christopher Hill, the chief American negotiator. "We have to take the momentum of this agreement and see that it is implemented."

Mr. Hill said that negotiations with the North Koreans were torturous at every stage and that he expects that the broad agreement will take time to put into practice. But he called the signing a "turning point."

"This is first time they have committed to completely dismantle their weapons in an international agreement," Mr. Hill said. "They cannot just stall and pretend it does not exist. I think they have gotten the message."

Mr. Hill said he was willing in principle to travel to Pyongyang in the near future to continue discussions, though he said any such trip would require approval from the Bush administration.

In Washington, President Bush reacted cautiously this morning, calling the North Korean move "a positive step."

"It was a step forward in making this word a more secure place," Mr. Bush said. "The question is, over time, will all parties adhere to the agreement."

Progress in the North Korean talks could give the United States and European countries some diplomatic momentum in their negotiations with Iran over that country's nuclear weapons program, which is not considered as advanced as the North Korean one.

More generally, it would appear to increase support for people inside the Bush administration who favored pursuing laborious negotiations with the North Koreans. Hardliners in the administration and in Congress had raised questions about the usefulness of negotiations with the country, which they have argued has no intention of abandoning its nuclear weapons.

Critics of the agreement will likely point to the fact that it remains vague on the sequence of concessions that North Korea, the United States and other parties agreed to make, meaning that negotiation could drag on for many more months before any progress is made in slowing the North's program to develop nuclear weapons.

"It is significant that the countries have agreed on a broad set of principles," said Koh Yu Hwan, a North Korea expert at Dong Guk University in Seoul. "But they postponed addressing the hot-potato issues to prevent the talks from collapsing."

Most pointedly, the agreement finesses the North Korean demand that proved the biggest stumbling block in the latest round of talks - its condition that the outside world provide a light-water nuclear reactor that it says it will use to produce electricity. The issue is left essentially unresolved, potentially leaving both sides to claim that their views prevailed.

The agreement states that the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea will discuss providing North Korea with a light-water reactor "at the appropriate time." Appropriate is not defined in the text, leaving open the possibility that North Korea will continue to insist on receiving that concession as a first step before it gives up its nuclear weapons.

A senior American official said all the other parties made clear to North Korea that "the appropriate time" would come only after North Korea rejoined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and re-admitted nuclear inspectors. He added that North Korea would not be able to achieve those goals until it dismantles its nuclear program.

But the official acknowledged that the issue had proven to be the most sensitive one for the Bush administration. After the Chinese side introduced a compromise draft agreement on Friday, it took the administration the full weekend to decide whether it could accept the mention of the light-water reactor, the official said. He asked not to be identified in discussing the thinking of other administration officials.

One reason it proved sensitive is that it echoes a 1994 accord to end North Korea's nuclear program that had been negotiated by the Clinton administration. That accord, known as the "agreed framework," called for the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea in return for the North freezing and later ending its weapons program.

The Bush administration criticized the concessions the Clinton administration made to achieve that agreement and later accused North Korea of violating it, which led to the standoff.

The administration official emphasized that the new accord does not repeat what he viewed as the main mistake of the agreed framework because it does not focus on "freezing" the North's nuclear program, but makes its total abandonment the benchmark for progress.

"We were very careful not to get caught up in the notion of a freeze," he said. Although many details remain unresolved, the accord appears to be a significant victory for China. Beijing cajoled both the United States and North Korea to continue meeting each other despite repeated threats by both sides to discontinue negotiations.

In the latest round of talks, Beijing brokered the compromise agreement after four days of discussions left the talks in a deadlock. It then insisted that the text had to remain unchanged, forcing the parties to get approval for the agreement from their capitals. It took several days and some intensive bargaining sessions to line up support, but the Chinese draft was agreed to with only small alternations, participants in the talks said.

"I think they found the red line for the North Koreans and then stuck with that text," said the American official.

China has long argued that North Korea's nuclear problems cannot be dealt with through pressure or military force and must be addressed through comprehensive negotiations aimed at addressing Pyongyang's full range of concerns.

The Bush administration also overhauled the substance and the style of its approach to North Korea. Officials stopped using the accusatory language President Bush once used when he called North Korea a member of the "axis of evil" and called the nation's leader, Kim Jong-Il, a tyrant.

Instead, the Americans have worked closely with South Korea and China to address North Korea's security and economic concerns and reassured Pyongyang that it recognizes the country as sovereign. Officials relaxed their stand on the North retaining some kind of peaceful nuclear program.

The new agreement commits North Korea to scrap all of its existing nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities, to rejoin the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and to re-admit international nuclear inspectors. North Korea withdrew from the treaty and expelled inspectors in 2002.

The United States and North Korea also pledged to respect each other's sovereignty and right to peaceful co-existence and to work toward normalization of relations. The two countries do not have full diplomatic relations and did not sign a peace treaty after the Korean War.

Washington declared as part of the agreement that it does not now have any nuclear weapons at its bases in South Korea and that it "has no intention to attack or invade the DPRK with nuclear or conventional weapons."

The DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's formal name.

On the question of civilian uses of nuclear power, today's agreement states that North Korea claims the right to pursue "peaceful uses of nuclear energy." It went on to say, "The other parties expressed their respect and agreed to discuss at an appropriate time the subject of the provision of light-water reactor to the DPRK."

Mr. Hill said he expected that a light-water reactor would cost $2 billion to $3 billion and would take a decade to build. While a light-water reactor does not produce fuel for atomic weapons as efficiently as the North's existing modified-graphite reactors do, American officials have said that it still raises proliferation risks and cannot be a first step in arranging the nuclear disarmament of the country.

North Korea has said it requires the new nuclear plant to provide electricity. But Mr. Hill said building a new nuclear plant would be an inefficient way of boosting its electricity supplies. He said the North considers a civilian nuclear plant a "trophy."

The agreement includes a commitment by South Korea to build power plants and transmission lines to provide the North with 2,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to roughly double to total supply of electrical power for its northern neighbor.