WASHINGTON — The Bush administration persuaded its Asian and European allies on Tuesday to suspend a multibillion-dollar project to build two nuclear reactors in North Korea, in what appeared to be the last step in the dissolution of the 1994 accord that temporarily froze North Korea's nuclear program.
After a meeting in New York on Tuesday, representatives from the international energy consortium set up under the agreement said that by Nov. 21, Japan, South Korea, the United States and the European Union would announce the fate of the project. "The executive board decided to refer this to the capitals," the statement from the Korean Energy Development Organization said.
But officials who attended the meeting said the announcement was a formality, and that the decision to suspend the project had been reached. That will likely kill it since, according to senior officials in Washington, President Bush has no intention of ever reviving a nuclear energy program in North Korea, even if an agreement is reached on controlling its nuclear weapons program. The United States has raised the possibility of helping with non-nuclear energy efforts as part of a North Korean accord to disarm.
The State Department made clear on Tuesday that whatever the diplomatic wording about suspension, the project is dead. "Our view is that we want an end to the program," Adam Early, the department's deputy spokesman, said on Tuesday.
The announcement would effectively be the death knell for the 1994 accord, the so-called Agreed Framework, which was reached after the Clinton administration and North Korea appeared headed toward a confrontation over the North's nuclear weapons program.
The accord has long been a target of hawks inside the Bush administration, who insist that North Korea began cheating on the agreement almost as soon as the ink was dry. They also were critical of provisions that had U.S. taxpayers financing the supply of fuel oil for North Korea in return for its agreement to freeze, but not dismantle, the program.
Still, about 550 workers — about 100 North Koreans and several hundred workers from Uzbekistan and engineers from South Korea — have been busy preparing the ground for the first nuclear reactor.
The South Korean government had argued in favor of keeping the construction going — even at a slower pace — to keep the North talking about dismantling its nuclear programs. Bush refused, arguing that the North abrogated its rights to the reactors when it secretly started a second weapons program, based on uranium-enrichment technology it obtained from Pakistan.
Bush began the squeeze on North Korea by cutting off the U.S.-supplied fuel oil. North Korea responded by restarting the plant, previously frozen, that fabricates weapons fuel.
Nevertheless, construction workers kept digging and building at the huge nuclear site in Kumho, on the North Korean coast, because that project, worth $4.6 billion, was largely financed by South Korea and Japan. It is the largest, most expensive construction project in North Korea, a desperately poor country, and it is unclear how the North Korean government will react to its suspension.
While Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has frequently said the Agreed Framework may have prevented North Korea from building scores of nuclear weapons over the past decade, its critics — ranging from Vice President Dick Cheney to Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice — could not wait for it to be dissolved. Rice has often argued that Clinton erred by not insisting that all nuclear material be shipped out of North Korea, and by offering the country energy aid before it had fully disarmed.
The man who negotiated the treaty, Robert L. Gallucci, now dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, said in an interview Tuesday that the program probably should have been suspended a year ago, when North Korea admitted to violating the nuclear freeze. But he argued that announcing its complete demise was a mistake.
"There is no reason to bury it, and to project a posture of no interest in regenerating the deal," Gallucci said. "We need every carrot we have with the North Koreans — and saying that it is dead is gratuitous, an appeal to a domestic audience."
A senior Asian official said Tuesday night that while the wording of the final announcement later this month will refer to the suspension of the agreement, the United States and its allies understand that if no substitute agreement is reached in six-nation negotiations with the North, "there is no chance this program will be revived."
If an agreement is struck, the administration would very likely seek to replace the nuclear reactors with conventional power plants, Bush's aides say. It is unclear whether that would be acceptable to the North Koreans, who have insisted that they need nuclear power to meet their energy needs.