Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill made the following comments on 10 January 2008 at the Kerry Center Hotel, Beijing, China (h/t P). Of note, and more than once, Hill emphatically denies that that the U.S. has received even a draft of the declaration (see comments by Bruce Klingner on this), and stressed the need for North Korea to provide a full and unambiguous nuclear declaration that does not require the U.S. and the other parties to continually press for further information:

Our point is that a declaration is a declaration, and we can’t be sweeping problems under the rug or pretending that issues don’t exist. The point of it is to be complete and correct. I have told the North Koreans on many occasions that we are not interested in picking out some element in the declaration and start asking a thousand more questions. What we need to know is what the scope of their nuclear programs is.

The abbreviated text of the press conference is below.

HILL: I just had a good discussion with Wu Dawei to discuss the way forward on the Six-Party process. We focused, of course, on the need to complete the phase two actions and, in particular, try to complete the declaration. So we kicked around some ideas on how we might do that and agreed that we will be in close contact as we see what we can do in the next week or two. I think the Chinese made the point that we’re not maybe as far apart as people might think. There are obviously a couple of issues that are important that we need to get resolved. But we’ve also made a lot of progress on the declaration itself. We also compared notes on our trips to Yongbyon and his own observations of the degree that the disabling has gone forward. So it was a good discussion. We’ll have to see what we can do in the next days and weeks to try to complete this declaration this year.

[. . .]

QUESTION: Will we see the next heads of delegation meeting after we see the declaration?

HILL: I don’t know. [. . .] The issue is for the North Koreans to come forward with a declaration that is complete and correct, and they have not forwarded that to the Chinese at this point. Again, we had a really good discussion of what the elements of that are, and I think we’re in sync as to what needs to be done. So we’ll see. He’s in touch with all the parties including the North Koreans.

QUESTION: Was there any sense that he was trying to maybe persuade the U.S. to kind of back down on its demands?

HILL: No. He wasn’t trying to persuade us about anything. You should ask him, but my sense is he was fairly optimistic that the overall process is moving forward and that once we get into phase three, we can also make some serious progress. So he was, as I am, very interested in getting through phase two.

QUESTION: What is your sense about what is holding back North Korea from offering this declaration? Is it specific elements in dispute, or is it distrust about the wider political environment?

HILL: No. I think you have to ask them. But some of the elements – and, again, I don’t want to get into specifically identifying what they are, because if I identify certain elements as stumbling blocks then we will surely make them stumbling blocks — I think part of it is that the DPRK does not want to acknowledge certain activities, because to do so involves for them a change of how they have handled those activities in the past. So I think there is concern on their part that to acknowledge certain activities would invite additional questioning on our part and further scrutiny on things.

Our point is that a declaration is a declaration, and we can’t be sweeping problems under the rug or pretending that issues don’t exist. The point of it is to be complete and correct. I have told the North Koreans on many occasions that we are not interested in picking out some element in the declaration and start asking a thousand more questions. What we need to know is what the scope of their nuclear programs is. And we want to get to the point where when all these nuclear programs are abandoned, we don’t find out there are some additional programs that were not addressed because they were excluded in the declaration. So we need to be very clear on what they have been up to.

QUESTION: Does that include uranium enrichment?

HILL: Again, I don’t want to get into specific elements. You can certainly guess which elements there are problems with in terms of how they make the declaration, but I’ll let you guess on that. I don’t want to identify them myself.

QUESTION: Is there any draft of the declaration or –

HILL: No. They have not given us a declaration. We had some discussions when we were in Pyongyang. But we don’t have a declaration, and there is no sign that they have given one to the Chinese. In fact, when they do have a declaration, it is appropriate to give it to the Chinese — not to us.

QUESTION: So if they haven’t given you anything written down, how do you know the declaration –

HILL: We had a discussion of what all the elements are in three main categories of materials, facilities, and programs. And while we were in –Actually, this really started last August in Shenyang with the denuclearization working group. We discussed what would be in all those three categories, and there were some glaring omissions which we raised and which we discussed again. But it was pretty clear in those discussions that there were going to be some real omissions. Another way we could have done it is to invite them to submit an incorrect and incomplete declaration and
then start haggling over that. But instead we chose to continue the discussion with the idea that when they do produce a declaration, it ought to be pretty close to being final.

QUESTION: The exchange of letters between President Bush and Kim Jong Il had any impact? And secondly, the Chinese sent a delegation to Pyongyang recently. Who was in it?

HILL: Wu Dawei was part of that.

QUESTION: And what happened? What was the outcome?

HILL: Nothing that I could tell. I think Wu went down to Yongbyon as I did, and he talked to some of the technical people there. He talked to the Americans there who are doing some of the disabling activities and felt, as I did, that we’ve made a lot of progress on disabling. You know, it is important to keep that in mind as we face this problem of a declaration — that with respect to disabling, we’ve gotten a lot done and stuff that has never been done before. I think we can all derive some optimism from that. But in this business we have to insist on completing all the tasks, and we’re simply not there yet on the declaration.
Okay? Oh.

QUESTION: Did the Chinese share your view that North Korea hasn’t submitted its declaration [inaudible]?

HILL: They are not suggesting that they’ve submitted a declaration, because there is no declaration.