A rchive Date
[ 11-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.msnbc.com/news/857962.asp?0sl= - 12
U.S. plays down North Korean move
By Glenn Kessler
THE WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 - North Korea’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was greeted yesterday as a regrettable but expected development by a Bush administration deeply split over how to respond to the escalating crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Some senior officials are counseling careful engagement, and others are urging complete isolation that would lead to the crumbling of the North Korean regime. The “very dramatic tensions” within the government have led to near paralysis in policy-making, one official said.
FOR THE MOMENT, officials have settled on a tack of trying to break what they consider the usual cycle of North Korea’s relations with the United States - in which the regime acts badly and then wins concessions - by refusing to express all but perfunctory concern over the North Korean action. But this approach has been opposed by North Korea’s neighbors and has badly ruptured relations with South Korea, a longtime ally of the United States.
“We’re not going to be intimidated. We’re not going to be put into a panic situation,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday. The government in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, understands “it is only through compliance and not through defiance that they will be able to move forward with their needs, security and otherwise,” Powell added.
Yet several officials are privately skeptical that the tough line can be held for much longer before the administration, under pressure from its allies, will have to offer a more positive vision of its relationship with North Korea. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R - Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that there has to be “a light at the end of the tunnel” for the North Koreans. “North Korea must have at least a glimpse of what their prospects might be” under a deal with the United States, he said.
The crisis began in October, when North Korea admitted having a secret program to enrich uranium, which could be used for nuclear weapons. The Bush administration, over the objections of Japan and South Korea, pushed for an immediate suspension of fuel oil deliveries to North Korea. In response, North Korea last month ousted international inspectors and moved to restart a plutonium facility that had been closed under a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration.
Many U.S. officials appear to have decided that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is behaving like a madman to obtain concessions. One official with access to intelligence said much of the clandestine intelligence supports the theory that he ultimately wants to negotiate a deal to win rewards from the West.
But, the official added, intelligence analysts are beginning to argue that Kim is intent on acquiring nuclear bombs as soon as possible. He said it is possible that both theories are correct - that Kim will accept a deal but that, at the same time, he will undertake a crash program to acquire the weapons as a fallback if the administration continues to play hardball.
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY DIVIDED
North Korea’s announcement yesterday - the first time any nation has withdrawn from the treaty, the key international regime for halting the spread of nuclear weapons - was denounced by many nations, including its old allies, China and Russia.
But the International Atomic Energy Agency, which earlier this week gave North Korea “one last chance” to adhere to its nuclear commitments, said it will not immediately refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council. Britain and France, however, said the time has come to refer the matter to that United Nations body for action.
South Korean President Kim Dae Jung said “the North’s withdrawal from the NPT brought the situation on the Korean Peninsula from bad to worse by one step.”
North Korea said the withdrawal was effective immediately, since it had previously suspended a threatened withdrawal, in 1993, after striking a deal with the Clinton administration. But IAEA and U.S. officials said yesterday that they regard Pyongyang’s announcement as the start of a required 90 - day countdown to resignation from the treaty.
A senior North Korean official dismissed the IAEA yesterday as a lapdog of the United States and blamed the Bush administration for sparking the crisis. Pak Gil Yon, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, said President Bush’s designation of North Korea as part of an “axis of evil” and his doctrine of preemptive attacks were tantamount to “openly declaring a nuclear war.”
Pak stressed that, despite leaving the Non - Proliferation Treaty, North Korea has “no intention to produce nuclear weapons” but that any sanctions levied by the Security Council would be considered a declaration of war. He added that the Bush administration’s offer earlier this week of talks, but not negotiations, was “not a sincere attitude.”
But Pak and his government, in a statement, said the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) is willing to work directly with the United States. “If the United States drops its hostile policy and stops its nuclear threat to the DPRK, the DPRK may prove through a separate verification between the DPRK and the U.S. that it does not make any nuclear weapons,” the statement said.
NEW MEXICO TALKS PROCEED
Meanwhile, a pair of North Korean envoys met for a second day yesterday with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration. The North Koreans requested the meeting with Richardson after the administration said it would be willing to talk.
Richardson briefed Powell on the talks yesterday afternoon. “There was nothing particularly new from them, although they did express interest in a dialogue,” a State Department official said. “The usual channels remain open should North Korea have more to say.”
After seven hours of talks, Richardson told reporters last night that he will meet with the North Koreans again on Saturday. He said the talks were “positive, frank and candid.”
The administration announced its offer to talk after meetings at the State Department with South Korean and Japanese diplomats. The South Korean delegation questioned why the United States seemed intent on resolving both the issue of North Korea’s secret project of enriching uranium and the issue of its reopening the plutonium plant. They argued that the reopening of the plutonium facility is a much graver situation, because with it, North Korea would have material for several nuclear weapons within months, while the uranium project is several years from completion.
But U.S. officials responded that the uranium project represents a broad breach of North Korea’s nuclear commitments, which is why fuel oil shipments need to be halted.
North Korea has repeatedly requested a nonaggression treaty with the United States. South Korea has also asked U.S. officials to consider offering some sort of written assurance that the United States would not attack North Korea. Significantly, the U.S. delegation did not reject that idea and said they will consider it. In an interview Wednesday, Powell also held out the prospect of some sort of formal security assurance to North Korea.
But that approach has already raised objections from those who are demanding that the Bush administration must continue to isolate North Korea. In an article to be published in next week’s Weekly Standard, Sen. John McCain (R - Ariz.) harshly criticizes the administration for appearing to take the military option off the table.
“The administration now appears to have embraced, and in some respects exceeded, the style and substance of [President Bill] Clinton’s diplomacy,” McCain says. “Both the president and secretary of state publicly ruled out the use of force, although force could eventually prove to be the only means to prevent North Korea from acquiring a nuclear arsenal - a dangerously shortsighted precedent that even the Clinton administration did not publicly suggest.”
Nicholas Eberstadt, a Korea specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, said the administration faces few good choices. “We are in a situation where something has to give,” he said. “Both sides cannot be satisfied. This is really a zero - sum game.”
As part of yesterday’s diplomacy, Bush called Chinese President Jiang Zemin about the North Korean announcement.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush told Jiang that this is “an issue that binds the United States in a common purpose with China and other nations around the world” and that he is seeking “a peaceful multilateral solution.”
Administration officials have been deeply frustrated by what they regard as China’s apparent inability or unwillingness to press North Korea more forcefully to halt the crisis. The Chinese, instead, have told U.S. officials that they need to begin negotiating with North Korea.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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