Senators and Administration Spar Over North Korea Policy
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
The New York Times
June 14, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 14 - Two senior senators, a Republican and a Democrat, pointedly criticized American policy on North Korea today, saying that it was inconsistent, ineffective and undercut efforts to revive stalled talks with Pyongyang by giving the impression that its real aim was regime change.
But the top American official involved in the six-party talks on North Korea, Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary for East Asia, defended the Bush administration's approach and indicated that there were no plans to soften the tone.
Addressing the criticism leveled by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, and that panel's ranking Democrat, Joseph Biden of Delaware, Mr. Hill said the administration would be "a little stubborn" on its strategy.
"We have made very clear that if the regime in North Korea feels it's going to be safer or will do better with nuclear weapons," Mr. Hill said a committee hearing, "it's very much operating under a false assumption."
"While we don't think time is on our side," he added, "it's not on their side, either."
Mr. Lugar and Mr. Biden indicated that their criticism reflected frustration and division within the administration over how to proceed with efforts to stop North Korea's nuclear program at a time when Pyongyang had stayed away from the six-party talks for a year. While North Korea said last week that it would return to the talks, which include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, as well as the United States and North Korea, it did not agree to a date.
Mr. Lugar, generally restrained in his criticisms, suggested that Bush administration officials appeared so divided on North Korea as to be at cross purposes.
"Although I understand that there may be a need for some ambiguity in United States policy toward North Korea," he said, "it is not evident this ambiguity has been constructive or even intentional."
There were divisions, he said, both on the questions of changing the Pyongyang government and of offering it economic incentives. There were also differences, another senior Republican, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, said, about whether to seek sanctions through the United Nations.
"If our policy is to be effective," Mr. Lugar said, "our ultimate course must be internal consistency."
Moreover, Mr. Lugar said, United States efforts to persuade China to intensify pressure on North Korea had been undercut when a report was leaked about confidential United States-Chinese talks.
United States-North Korean contacts have followed a rough path in recent years, often jarred off course by sharp comments from one side or the other.
Mr. Biden, suggesting that some of those comments had been calculated to slow diplomatic progress, asserted that the administration had been "paralyzed by internal policy divisions on North Korea."
"President Bush has failed to resolve the dispute between those who advocate a policy of regime change and those who argue for talks to eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons in return for sanctions relief, economic assistance and diplomatic normalization," Mr. Biden said.
Mr. Lugar said that the notion "that the United States position has been one of promoting regime change" - an idea kept alive through harsh criticisms of the North by administration officials - had not only made Pyongyang wary about negotiations but had also left United States allies confused.
To that, Mr. Hill reiterated a pair of administration reassurances that North Korea has sought. "As Secretary Rice said recently, we have no intention to attack or invade North Korea," Mr. Hill said. "We deal with North Korea as a sovereign nation in the six-party talks and at the United Nations."
But he then said that Pyongyang needed to show its seriousness, and soon.
"North Korea's unwillingness to return to the table casts increasing doubts on how serious it really is about ending its decades' old nuclear ambitions," he said.
The North appeared inclined to sit "without any sense of impatience, or without enough of a sense of impatience, and wait for us to sweeten the offer," Mr. Hill said. "So I think this is a time when we have to be a little stubborn on this." |
