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| Kim Jong-un (First post.com) |
Disablement is a word that has crept into the language of the Six-Party talks since it was used by Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary. In the absence of a more acceptable term, disablement became something of a convenience. There is a general agreement that the current phase is a difficult one. As Christopher Hill put it, the Six-Party talks have reached a point where “they have not been before, beyond just shutting down the facilities.” In such situations of advanced and complex diplomatic negotiations, terminologies become quite important. This is a fact which negotiators to the Six-Party talks have come to realise of late. Christopher Hill pointed this out when he talked about the need to come up with common definitions, “so that we are satisfied when they say they are disabling, we know what they're doing and we agree that it's disablement.”
However, gloating over terminologies is not going to get us anywhere on dismantling North Korean facilities. The task before the international community is to effectively dismantle the North Korean facilities in a manner which allows verification and forensic activities. In August 2007 some ideas were also throw up at the meeting of the denuclearisation group at Shengyang. This was followed up by a five-day inspection of the Yongbyon facility by a team of American, Chinese and Russian experts conducted a five-day inspection in September 2007. However, the five-day inspections and other such future visits will enable experts to adapt the ideas thrown up to suit the actual equipment present in North Korean facilities.
