‘We are very happy with the way things have gone,’ says Nick Saunders. ‘Where appropriate, we have made suggestions to the course providers as to how things can be improved, and no doubt these will be taken on board for next year.’(Photograph omitted). THE United States will resume nuclear talks with North Korea in Geneva today, while radioactive fuel rods, which could make five nuclear weapons, remain off- bounds to international inspectors in the Communist country. It is four weeks since the sudden death of Kim Il Sung disrupted the last talks, and anxiety is mounting in Washington that North Korea’s nuclear programme might become uncontainable. The talks will be dominated by the fate of 8,000 uranium fuel rods, which are sitting in cooling ponds, after being withdrawn two months ago from the nuclear reactor in Yongybon, 60 miles north of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. The spent fuel rods could be reprocessed to yield sufficient plutonium for five or six nuclear bombs, according to US estimates.
North Korea has said that it will neither reprocess the used rods, nor will it put new rods into the reactor, while talks with the US are going on. The unspoken corollary is that if Washington does not offer sufficient economic and diplomatic enticements during the talks, Pyongyang can always revert to its nuclear programme.The US negotiator, Robert Gallucci, is upbeat in public about the chances of a breakthrough in the talks, apparently hoping that the departure of the old Socialist ideologue, Kim Il Sung, will make the North Koreans more amenable to suggestions of economic development, in exchange for abandoning their nuclear ambitions.

In recent days, he has even criticised the South Korean government for provoking North Korea, by staging a press conference with a North Korean defector who claimed Pyongyang already had five nuclear bombs. ‘It does not seem to me that it added clarity and warmth to the dialogue,’ Mr Gallucci said .But, despite Pyongyang’s avowed commitment to the success of the talks, the Communist state has yet to prove by its actions that it is committed to giving up its single remaining bargaining tool in its test of wills with the US and South Korea. In the last two years Pyongyang has gained most when it was most intransigent, since Washington and Seoul have understandably wanted to avoid a breakdown of talks that could ultimately lead to war.Although two inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are still in North Korea and are apparently confident that the 8,000 rods have not been removed from the cooling ponds, they have not been able to determine what state the rods are in. North Korea has said something must be done with the rods by the end of August, before they start corroding and become dangerous to handle. The US would like the rods to be shipped out of North Korea entirely and put into long- term storage elsewhere.The US would then help North Korea to build a light- water reactor, which is safer than North Korea’s graphite reactor.

But Mr Gallucci, who has finished a tour of Japan, South Korea, China and Russia to discuss the North Korean nuclear issue, has been unable to persuade anyone to accept the rods.. AS IF a basket-case economy, a soaring crime rate and Vladimir Zhirinovsky are not enough to trouble the Russians, now they have to deal with the marriage of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. It’s more than Jacko’s fans can bear, according to the country’s most popular daily newspaper. ‘There are many tragedies in the life of our people,’ Moskovsky Komsomolets said ‘The latest one concerns mainly females below 25 years old. Girls, accept our condolences.
‘Having become a reputable family man, (Jackson) has rehabilitated himself in the eyes of respectable Americans, who would never forgive any rock star (accused of) being a child molester,’ the paper said ‘We’re not Americans. His fans here would prefer him to be gay, a child-molester and a serial killer all at once, rather than have their girlish dreams wrecked by an image of him as an exemplary husband.’And if the Russians are upset by Jackson as an exemplary husband, what will they think of him as a liberator of Eastern Europe?In conjunction with Redeeming Eastern Europe, an album due out in the autumn, Jackson plans to film a video clip in Budapest this weekend. Taking the role of ‘redeemer’, he arrives in an East European capital, chases out the Soviet troops and is honoured with a monument erected by the grateful city.IT PROBABLY won’t be as memorable a communication as Alexander Graham Bell’s ‘Come here, Watson, I want you.’ Still, Warren Christopher will make a historic telephone call next week when he places the first direct call from Israel to Jordan.

The link is one of the provisions of the 25 July accord that ended a 46-year state of war.A DIRECT descendant of the Inca Emperor Atahualpa (he of the gold-filled room) is alive and well and sitting in the Ecuadorean cabinet in Quito. President Sixto Duran Ballen, who has been taking a lot of flak from Ecuador’s militant Indian organisations, hit upon the notion of appointing Luis Felipe Duchicela XXVIII to the new post of secretary for Indian affairs, on the assumption that the natives would be suitably impressed. Luis Felipe’s paternal grandfather was in the direct blood line from Inca Roca, one of Atahualpa’s sons, and Princess Cori Duchicela. Since 1984, Luis Felipe has been hereditary king of Cacha, a community of 10,000 fiercely independent Indians. At his swearing-in the honour guard was replaced by Cacha Indians in ponchos, blowing quenas, the Andean pan pipes.But all is not quite as it seems. Luis Felipe was born in the port of Guayaquil, not in the ancestral mountains. He has an MBA from Yale, is a vice-president of the US- owned Chiquita Brands banana company and has no track record of involvement in Indian causes.(Photograph omitted).