Transcript
AMB. CHRIS HILL: It is a great opportunity here to come and talk about this, what is known now as the February 13th Initial Action Agreement, to tell you what it is and what it isn't because to be sure, there has been a lot of commentary on it. From the right, we have heard people like John Bolton who said this is nothing but the agreed framework. From the left, we have heard this is nothing but the agreed framework. And so, I would like to explain that, in fact, it is different from the agreed framework.
But in explaining that, I do want to say that those people who worked on the agreed framework worked on a different agreement in a different era and worked under extremely challenging circumstances. Indeed, if you look back to what was going on 1993-1994, people were actually talking about war on the Korean Peninsula, and I think those of us who work on negotiations have a great deal of respect for those who worked on them before and who will work on them in the future. There is a reason these problems have a tendency to stick around. They are tough problems, and they do require successive generations of people to work on them with the understanding that what we are all trying to do is to achieve the same objective.
I felt that our Six-Party process has been the right approach at the right time. I think getting the September 19th, 2005 agreement on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was a very important agreement because it is the fulfillment of that agreement that we are all aiming toward, that is, nothing is finally accomplished until the objectives of the September, 2005 agreement are accomplished.
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