Morning Walk-Through, St. Regis Hotel, Beijing, China - July 20
Remarks
by Christopher R. Hill
Assistant
Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Morning
Walk-Through, St. Regis Hotel
Beijing,
China
July,
20, 2007
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
HILL: I’m already late for these meetings so I really have
to go, but I’ll take one or two questions.
QUESTION: Is
this going to be your really last day for the session?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
HILL: Yes. I think we’ve done some comments for their joint
statement. We’ll return the comments to them, and presumably
we will have a little discussion about the joint statement.
QUESTION: Do
you think DPRK has been supportive? Do you have any discussion of
points for the deadline or statement? And would you care to --
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
HILL: There is a discussion about that, and now ultimately we
decided not to put in deadlines yet. We’ll put in deadlines
when we have the working groups and we know precisely what we are
talking about. For example, how long does it take to disable nuclear
facilities. That is a technical question. If we put a deadline in
now, we are not really sure. My opinion remains the same -- that all
of this is quite doable by the end of the year. And I don’t
want to quote other people about that, because it’s my opinion.
But I do believe that it can be accomplished. It is the decision of
the Chinese chair not to include that opinion or that guess in the
statement.
QUESTION:
Secretary Hill, did this session help build momentum going forward?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
HILL: Oh, absolutely. This session absolutely has built
momentum. I mean, look at how far we have come in just seven days.
We have got the shutdown of the entire facility, IAEA has deployed,
we’ve got a means to deliver this heavy fuel oil. But most of
all we have an incentive for everybody to continue to move forward,
and that I think is very key. There’s no incentive in that
February agreement for anyone to say, “Oh, I’ll take a
break now, and I won’t go forward.” Everyone is
incentivized to move forward. So by the standards of these things,
I’m very pleased.
How are the Red Sox
doing today? Did you see the scores? [Laughter]
QUESTION: The
next meeting with North Korea, can you talk about what you will do?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
HILL: I think we have a tentative date for before the end of
August. So I am going to look at my calendar and see if we can fix a
date, probably at the very end of August.
QUESTION: So
this is doable by the end of the year. What’s the incentive
for North Korea to do this by the end of the year? This is going to
take a long time to --
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
HILL: Well, because I think they have interest in things beside
fuel oil. They have an interest in getting storage capacity, things
like that. And the time to get going on that is very soon. So the
point is, the fuel oil, the 950 [950,000 tons], is contingent on
moving. Further fuel oil is contingent on further denuclearization.
Everyone knows that. At this point, we don’t need to put
deadlines to it. I think everyone understands, and so we’ll
try to just keep going forward.
QUESTION:
Increasing storage capacity for example is also going to take time,
so I don’t --
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
HILL: Well then we have to work out the sequencing. Again, how
you improve storage capacity is a very technical question which goes
beyond my modest diplomatic background to answer for you.
AIDE: I’m
sorry. We have to get going.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
HILL: I’ve really got to go, because the Chinese foreign
minister is expecting to see us all at 10:00, and I don’t think
it would be very polite if we walked in at ten past.
See you later. See you
next time. There will be a next time. [Laughter]
QUESTION: Will
you be back here today?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY
HILL: I doubt I’ll be coming back, I have a pretty busy
schedule and I have checked out and turned in my room key. Thank
you, see you later.
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