New Initiative on Disarmament of North Korea Nuclear Program
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Now to North Korea's nuclear program and a security guarantee with a big "if" attached. The United States may soon agree with a plan aimed at ending that nuclear program. For more, to South Korea and CNN's Sohn Jie-Ae, who joins us live by phone. Good morning.</s>SOHN JIE-AE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: Tell us about this agreement and who came up with it.</s>JIE-AE: Well, it is an agreement that is coming up with some of the major parties in the six-party talks that are trying to deal with North Korea's nuclear weapons program. It is the United States, South Korea, as well as China. Now, Japan and China will be also major parties of this agreement. It will be between the United States, South Korea and Japan. A frame of that will be conveyed to China. Now, this -- there are still specifics of this which are not clear, but we are looking at this as a step-by-step movement that will have the United States and South Korea, Japan and the other neighbors in this region offering North Korea a type of guarantee, after North Korea matches this guarantee by doing some simultaneous actions that guarantee that North Korea is willing to give up its nuclear weapons, and then proceed step by step to actually make this promise into reality. So, although we don't know the specifics of it yet, we are seeing -- what we are seeing right now is a formation of what may be a solution to the long-term North Korea nuclear problem -- Carol.</s>COSTELLO: And, you know, we were talking about this earlier. In essence, this agreement will be taken to the Chinese. China will present this agreement to North Korea. And in essence, isn't -- let's see -- isn't one of the stipulations is that U.S. arms inspectors will go in to make sure that North Korea is dismantling its nuclear program? And then, if the U.S. arms inspectors find that's true, then the United States will provide this security guarantee?</s>JIE-AE: Yes. So, there are steps of verification that will accompany any type of promise made by North Korea. The fallacy of the 1994 Geneva agreement, there was a lack of verification after North Korea agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program. It was a very difficult process of allowing North Korea to let access in for outside inspectors to make sure that North Korea was complying with its promises, and that is one of the steps that the United States and the other parties of any type of guarantee to North Korea want to make sure does not happen again. Now, China will play a major part in this. It will try to convey, and hopefully outside partners expect that China will try to convince North Korea that it will be in the best interest of North Korea to comply with this. But we will have to see whether this long type of negotiation, which is still in our future, will actually come about or not -- Carol.</s>COSTELLO: Sohn Jie-Ae reporting live from Seoul, South Korea, this morning. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com. Program>