President George W. Bush says that the six-party agreement on North Korea’s nuclear program is a victory for multilateral diplomacy:
"North Korea agreed to specific actions that will bring us closer to a Korea Peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons. Specifically, North Korea agreed that within sixty days it will shut down and seal all operations at the primary nuclear facilities it has used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. It has agreed to allow international inspectors to verify and monitor this progress. It is committed to disclosing all of its nuclear programs as an initial step toward abandoning these programs."
As part of the agreement, the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea made commitments to North Korea, said President Bush:
"We will meet those commitments as this agreement is honored. Those commitments include economic, humanitarian, and energy assistance to the people of North Korea."
As North Korea shuts down and seals its plutonium production and reprocessing activities and discusses with the other five parties a list of all its nuclear programs, it will receive emergency energy assistance equivalent to fifty-thousand tons of heavy fuel oil. And as North Korea completely declares all of its nuclear programs and disables all of its existing nuclear facilities, it will receive economic, energy, and humanitarian assistance up to the equivalent of one-million tons of heavy fuel oil.
The agreement on North Korea's nuclear program marks "progress," said President Bush. "There's a lot of work to be done to make sure that the commitments made in this agreement become reality," he said, "but I believe it's an important step in the right direction."
