South Korea Offers Energy-for-Nuclear Deal
BY JOEL BRINKLEY
The New York Times
July 12, 2005
SEOUL, July 12 – South Korea announced today that it had offered to supply North Korea with a vast supply of electrical power, should the north agree to dismantle its nuclear-weapons program.
The United States, which had been cool to the South Korean proposal until now, plans to examine it with the intention of incorporating the idea into the broader offer that the United States made to North Korea last year as part of the six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations, a senior administration official said.
The South Korean announcement came on a day of developments that appeared to complicate the North Korean government’s agreement last Saturday to rejoin the six-nation disarmament talks later this month.
In Tokyo today, the Japanese government insisted that the long-festering issue of North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens decades ago be a part of the nuclear talks – an idea that both China and South Korea oppose. The Japanese request exposed the first open rift among the five nations involved in the talks since North Korea agreed to rejoin them.
Chung Dong-young, South Korea’s unification minister, presented the electricity offer to Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s leader, during a meeting in the Pyongyang on June 17. Under this plan, as Mr. Chung described it today, South Korea would string power lines across the border to points in North Korea and supply up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity to the north – helping to alleviate a desperate energy shortage.
Until today, South Korea had declined to make details of the offer public, saying only that it was a “significant proposal.”
But after a meeting of senior South Korean government officials to, Mr. Chung held a news conference and said, “In order to resolve the nuclear issue, we are willing to transmit power to North Korea if the North agrees on the dismantlement. I hope that this offer will provide a crucial momentum for the resolution of North Korea's nuclear issue and for the settlement of peace on the Korean peninsula.”
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived here from Japan just a few hours after the news conference. The senior official traveling with her said the offer would be a major topic of conversation between Ms. Rice and South Korean government leaders on Wednesday.
Early this month, Mr. Chung traveled to Washington and briefed Ms. Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney on his meeting with Mr. Kim and South Korea’s electricity offer. Mr. Cheney has been a leading advocate of the hard line the Bush Administration has taken in the six- party negotiations that also include Russia, China, South Korea and Japan.
Despite those meetings, the senior official said today that the United States had few details about the proposal and needed to learn more about it before deciding whether to include it as part of the older offer now on the table. The older proposal includes security assurances and energy assistance of far smaller magnitude and specificity than South Korea is offering.
“It would be another element out there which they can see and understand and maybe help them make their decision” on whether to abandon the weapons program, the senior official said.
Mr. Chung said that under the South Korean plan, the electricity could begin flowing by 2008. The proposal appears to replace the two light-water, nuclear-power reactors that were to be built in North Korea with South Korean and American help under a plan agreed to during the Clinton Administration. The Bush Administration withdrew support for the project in 2002, after North Korea acknowledged that it was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program.
“We'll see whether this is part of the overall picture, and then we have to look and see how it has affected South Korean thinking on the light water reactor, which is you know we have contained our enthusiasm about,” the senior official said.
During a news conference with Ms. Rice in Tokyo earlier today, Nobutaka Machimura, the Japanese foreign minister, said “the abduction issue” should be raised “in the six-party talks.” That has long been Japan’s position, but with all attention focused until now on persuading the North Koreans to return to the talks later this month, the request to add an unrelated issue to the negotiations got little attention.
Ms. Rice seemed to support the Japanese view. Asked about it at the same news conference, Ms. Rice said “several issues have to be resolved” during the talks “including human rights issues,” adding: “We have always supported Japan’s desire to see this resolved.”
Still, she added, “I do think everyone realizes that whatever else is on the table, the real issue” is North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
North Korea has admitted to abducting 13 Japanese citizens during the 1980’s to be trained as spies. Five were allowed to return home, but the North Koreans claimed the other eight had died. Japan wants a fuller accounting of their fate.
In an interview with Nippon television this morning, Ms. Rice offered a more pessimistic view of the North Korea talks than she has revealed before now, one that shows her patience is wearing thin.
“These talks have had an unfortunate pattern,” she said. “We meet for a couple of days, they break up, really nothing has been achieved, and we wait three months or six months or in this case another year until the talks resume, and during that period of time North Korea is improving its nuclear capability.
“Well, that's really not acceptable.” |
