US shift aims to ease N Korea negotiations

WASHINGTON, Mar 3 (Reuters) By acknowledging doubts about what it knows of North Korea's uranium enrichment program, the United States aims to set the record straight and ease resolution of an issue that has been a key obstacle to a nuclear agreement since 2002, US officials and experts say.

Under a six-country deal reached on February 13, Pyongyang committed to begin discussions within 60 days to produce a comprehensive list of its nuclear activities, including enrichment.

The issue is expected to be on the agenda when US and North Korean negotiators meet on Monday and Tuesday in New York.

But if the list proves incomplete -- reflecting a continued North Korean reluctance to move toward denuclearization while hiding enrichment work -- the agreement could unravel.

Chief US negotiator Chris Hill ''had to back off the previous US assessment of what North Korea was doing on uranium enrichment to make it easier to get a settlement,'' said Selig Harrison of the Woodrow Wilson Center thinktank, who first raised questions about the accuracy of the US allegations two years ago.

The administration in recent years used ''loose language'' and engaged in ''incremental analytical leaps of faith'' that may have inflated conclusions about North Korea's capability, making the issue harder to solve in negotiations, said Charles Pritchard, a former US negotiator with Pyongyang.

The current US approach tells the North ''there is a pathway out of this for you. It is not as dire as you've been led to believe'' and agreement is possible, said Pritchard, president of the Korea Economic Institute.

GAPS DETAILED The United States has long known Pyongyang was pursuing a plutonium-based nuclear program at its Yongbyon complex.

But in October 2002, it accused the North of pursuing a second covert program to produce highly enriched uranium, another source of fuel for nuclear weapons.

The North initially acknowledged the program but has since denied it.

The CIA reported in 2002 that North Korea began buying large amounts of centrifuge-related equipment in 2001 and was building a plant that could make enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons a year, perhaps by 2005.

The allegations caused a 1994 US-North Korea nuclear agreement to unravel.

After the February 13 deal, under which Pyongyang promised to disable Yongbyon in return for energy and other benefits, the US administration created a new dynamic for talks by publicly acknowledging gaps in what it knows about the North's enrichment activities.

Hill told a thinktank such a program would require ''a lot more equipment than we know that they have actually purchased,'' as well as ''some considerable production techniques that we're not sure whether they have mastered.'' A top US intelligence official on North Korea told Congress the administration now has ''mid-level'' confidence, instead of high confidence, that Pyongyang has production-scale capacity.

But Hill and others remained confident North Korea has bought equipment for a highly enriched uranium (HEU) program.

Michael Green, a former National Security Council senior Asia expert, said that in 2002 ''there was an intelligence community consensus that (the North) had been procuring virtually all of the components of the HEU facility design'' through Pakistani AQ Khan and that stands.

He and other experts said the recent US acknowledgments will give North Korea latitude to offer different explanations for buying enrichment technology, such that it was a ''rogue'' operation.

Also, given US intelligence failures in Iraq, ''the intelligence community and the administration are much more careful to say only what they know'' about North Korea and information about its nuclear-related shopping seems to have ''dried up,'' Green said.

REUTERS SP BST1854