KEDO, the organisation responsible for building two nuclear reactors and making interim deliveries of fuel oil in return for a freeze on the North's production of plutonium, from which nuclear bombs can be made.
This week's accord could result in little more than a return to a 1994 pact between America and North Korea, by which North Korea froze its operations at Yongbyon in return for fuel oil shipments and an agreement eventually to provide replacement nuclear reactors that could less easily be used to make weapons material.
The present controversy is over a 1994 deal in which North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear-weapons programme in return for the supply of fuel oil.
China is busy building bridges and investing in infrastructure across the continent, in return for oil and minerals to fuel its rapidly expanding economy.
In 1994, North Korea agreed to stop making plutonium, in return for which America and its allies would supply the country with fuel oil and build two Western-designed light-water nuclear reactors (since it is a bit harder to produce weapons-grade materials from such reactors than from the ones North Korea had been building).
Meanwhile, the implementation of a 1994 agreement that ended North Korea's plutonium production in return for two new western-designed nuclear reactors and interim supplies of heavy fuel oil is badly behind schedule, largely as a result of North Korea's obstructive behaviour: the two new reactors were meant to start producing electricity by 2003, but the first concrete will not be poured before the end of next year.
The Bush administration has so far turned down the idea of such a treaty with a regime that has shredded all previous agreements, including the one in 1994 that orginally froze the North's plutonium production in return for the offer of two less proliferation-prone nuclear reactors and interim deliveries of fuel oil.
American officials accuse North Korea of breaking a 1994 agreement, in which North Korea agreed to halt its production of plutonium in return for America, Japan, South Korea and other countries providing the impoverished country with fuel oil and, later, nuclear reactors to produce electric power but of a type that would make it harder for North Korea to extract plutonium for weapons.
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