"President Clinton approved a plan today to arrange more than $4 billion in energy aid to North Korea during the next decade in return for a commitment from the country's hard-line Communist leadership to freeze and gradually dismantle its nuclear weapons development program.
"This agreement will help achieve a longstanding and vital American objective -- an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula," Mr. Clinton said this afternoon, after his top foreign policy advisers described the details of an enormously complex agreement struck with North Korea late Monday.
American and North Korean officials plan to sign the broad accord on Friday, and almost immediately the United States will begin a remarkable new foreign aid program: it will provide for the North, with which it has never signed a peace treaty ending the Korean War, supplies of heavy oil to keep factories running and homes heated.
"This agreement is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the safety of the entire world," Mr. Clinton said in a brief appearance in the White House press room this afternoon. "It's a crucial step toward drawing North Korea into the global community."
The accord calls for a consortium of nations, led by South Korea and Japan, to provide the North with two light-water nuclear reactors, designed in a manner that makes it far more difficult for the North to convert nuclear waste into atomic weapons.
The total cost of the project was put at $4 billion by Robert L. Gallucci, the chief American negotiator with the North. The financing would be supplied by South Korea, Japan and possibly Germany, Russia and the United States.
Under the accord, North Korea would agree to allow full and continuous inspections of its existing nuclear sites, freeze and then later take apart some of its most important nuclear plants and ultimately ship out of the country fuel rods that could be converted into fuel for weapons."