Interview on CNNs "The Situation Room"

WOLF BLITZER: Joining us now, the Assistant Secretary of State, Chris Hill, the chief American negotiator. He's just back from those [Six-Party] Talks.

Mr. Secretary, thanks very much for coming in.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Sure.

WOLF BLITZER: It didn't take very long for the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations to say this is a really bad deal for the United States.

Listen to what John Bolton told us here in "The Situation Room."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO U.N.: It sends exactly the wrong signal to would-be proliferators around the world -- if you hold out long enough and wear down the State Department negotiators, eventually you get rewarded, in this case with massive shipments of heavy fuel oil for doing only partially what needs to be done -- the complete dismantling of their nuclear program.

END VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF BLITZER: Mr. Secretary, you want to respond to the former ambassador?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Well, look, he's a private citizen. He's certainly entitled to his views. And I think the President spoke very clearly about this yesterday.

What I would say is that it's true this is only a first step. It's not the whole thing. I mean, what we have is a 60-day agreement, where they’ll shut down and seal this reactor, the reactor that has been continuing to produce plutonium up to this very day. And then they -- We will begin discussing with them a list and try to get, run to ground all their other programs and go on from there. So it is going to be a step by step process.

WOLF BLITZER: As of now, they get to keep -- at least for now -- the what, six or eight nuclear bombs that they already have and all the enriched uranium, plutonium that they've already developed?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: They don't get to keep anything, in the sense that they've already agreed to a September '05 agreement in which they say they will get rid of all of their nuclear programs.

So what we're going to try to do is do this in phases. And the first phase is going to be to shut down the reactor, so that the problem of plutonium --which is on the order of some 50 kilos, that is, 110 or so pounds -- that that problem doesn't get any bigger. And then we'll move from there. So we're really doing this step by step.

WOLF BLITZER: They had a similar deal, as you remember, back in the Clinton Administration in '94, in which they promised to not go forward in exchange for a lot of economic assistance, energy assistance. But they were cheating on that deal.

What makes you think they're not going to cheat this time?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Well, you know, there's always the risk of cheating. And that's why you try to keep these on, you know, pretty short tranches. I mean, if they cheat in this 60-day process, we will know that pretty soon. So there's always the threat of that.

But I will say there's one big difference between this deal and the previous deal, which is this is a multilateral deal. China acts as a guarantor. They are one of the six parties and they are part of the deal. And that's very different from the past, when it was a bilateral arrangement between North Korea and the United States.

WOLF BLITZER: How much is this deal going to cost U.S. taxpayers?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Well, in the first tranche, what we're talking about in the first 60 days is a shipment of 50,000 tons of fuel oil. That's about $230 times 50,000, and it's shared among five nations. So you do the math. It's not a major amount.

What comes in the second tranche is much more. That would be on the order of $230 million, because it's a million tons of fuel oil, of heavy fuel oil. Again, it's shared among five states. And, again, we talk about fuel oil, but it actually can be humanitarian or economic assistance.

WOLF BLITZER: And what guarantee do you have that the North Koreans are actually going to destroy their existing nuclear weapons arsenal?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Well, in this first 60 days, we've got to sit down with them and go through the list of what they're finally going to declare to the international community. And on that list, we need to make sure that we've run to ground our concerns that they are, that they have a highly enriched uranium program. So we're going to sit down with them and go through what we have on that and see if we can figure that out.

And after we have done this list, in this next tranche, they are required to put together a declaration, and it has to be all of their programs, not some of their programs. So when we finally see that declaration, we can decide whether we think it's all rather than some.

WOLF BLITZER: And the point that former ambassador Bolton makes that this sends a horrible signal to countries like Iran -- that the U.S. is willing to go ahead and provide enormous amounts of economic assistance, even if you don't fully destroy your nuclear arsenal -- what about that point?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Well, North Korea is a country that has very little electricity and very little, frankly, heating fuel. Many North Koreans are in the dark, and they're cold. So, really, what we're doing is providing what is essentially some humanitarian assistance in return for them taking steps to get rid of these terrible nuclear programs.

I think if this succeeds, if we're able to do this on a step by step basis -- And, again, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of getting China with us. That was not the case when the earlier program went through. So having China, having Russia with us, having Japan, South Korea -- this is quite a powerful coalition. And if we can pull this off, frankly, I think it would be a good sign for other countries.

WOLF BLITZER: The U.S. ambassador, the chief negotiator, Chris Hill, joining us from the State Department.

Mr. Secretary, thanks very much.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY HILL: Thank you.