North Korea May Offer Way Out of Crisis - Diplomats
Thu January 9, 2003 06:57 AM ET
By Paul Eckert and Teruaki Ueno
SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea will agree to abandon its nuclear arms program if the United States reaffirms the contents of a 2000 joint communique which declared they had "no hostile intention" toward each other, diplomatic sources with close ties to Pyongyang said on Thursday.
The possible way out of a stand-off over North Korea's nuclear arms program comes a day after Washington offered dialogue with the reclusive communist state, but refused to offer incentives for scrapping its atomic ambitions.
In public, at least, the North maintained its fierce anti-American rhetoric and has yet to respond to Washington's offer, but a diplomatic source with close ties to Pyongyang suggested it was softening its stance.
North Korea also sent South Korea a telegram Thursday proposing holding the next regular minister-level talks with South Korea on January 21-24.
"Reaffirming the joint communique issued in October 2000 would suffice," the source told Reuters in Tokyo.
"The North would agree to abandon its nuclear program if the United States agrees to go back to the joint communique and re-affirm it."
In the 2000 statement, North Korea and the United States vowed to end decades of hostility and work for better ties.
Shortly after its signing, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Her trip was intended to lay the ground work for a visit to North Korea by then-President Bill Clinton, but his term ended before the trip materialized.
Tensions on the divided peninsula have risen since U.S. officials said in October that North Korea had admitted pursuing a nuclear arms program in violation of a 1994 pact, and escalated further after Pyongyang threatened to reactivate a nuclear plant capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.
North Korea kept the world waiting Thursday for a direct response to the U.S. offer of talks, repeating stock demands and denunciations of Washington which is insisting Pyongyang take the next step.
A day after the United States changed tack and offered a dialogue with the East Asian communist state, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Wednesday that "the ball is in North Korea's court."
But North Korea has not so far acknowledged either Washington's offer or Monday's ultimatum from the U.N. nuclear watchdog to readmit the inspectors it expelled last week.
Instead, North Korean radio repeated Pyongyang's demand that Washington signs a non-aggression treaty to end the row.
And in an article praising the fight against imperialism, the North's KCNA news agency said its army remained strong "regardless of whether enemies pursue an appeasement policy or a hard-line one."
U.S. officials insisted the United States would not dangle additional inducements to try to persuade Pyongyang to abandon a program believed to have spawned one or two nuclear weapons.
A U.S. diplomat in Seoul said Washington "doesn't like the idea of carrots" because Pyongyang has broken previous nuclear pledges.
"The whole idea of a non-aggression treaty doesn't ring well with Americans," the diplomat said. "U.S. aggression is not the issue. The issue is North Korea's nuclear program."
NO BARGAINING CHIP
India further raised tension in Asia Thursday, test-firing a shorter-range version of its nuclear-capable Agni missile that analysts said would boost the country's defense strategy against nuclear-armed neighbor Pakistan. The test came days after India and Pakistan, who ended a 10-month military confrontation over the disputed Kashmir region late last year, also exchanged tough nuclear rhetoric.
"After India's, Pakistan's and China's possession of nuclear weapons, we certainly would not want a mounting number of countries in the region to own nuclear weapons," Indonesian Foreign Affairs Minister Hassan Wirajuda said in Jakarta, urging dialogue with Pyongyang.
President Bush and other top officials have repeatedly said the United States has no intention of attacking North Korea, whose military is the world's fifth largest and is deployed offensively on its border with South Korea.
U.S. officials insisted that any talks the United States has with the North Koreans would be restricted to how they plan to abandon their nuclear ambitions and that Washington would not allow the nuclear program to become a bargaining chip.
Pyongyang has threatened war in the event of U.S. economic sanctions over the issue. Neither South Korea nor North Korean allies China and Russia have shown any support for sanctions.
In Washington Wednesday, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice discussed North Korea with South Korean presidential envoy Yim Sung-joon.
South Korea has argued for a dialogue with the North and Yim said he had told U.S. officials that South Korean President Kim Dae-jung "hopes to lay the groundwork for a turning point" in the crisis before his term ends in February.
The two sides also plan to hold a third round of Red Cross talks on January 20-22 to discuss further reunions of families split up by the 1950-53 civil war which ended in only a cease-fire, technically leaving the two sides still at war.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly visits South Korea Sunday to discuss North Korea at the start of a tour that will also take him to China, Singapore, Indonesia and Japan. The State Department said Kelly had no plans to go to Pyongyang.
In Thailand, the visiting chairman of the Russian state Duma, or parliament speaker, Gennady Seleznev, said North Korea had every right to pursue a nuclear power program.
"We think the U.S. should change the tone and mode of their talking to North Korea, and we hope the U.S. will heed the urging of the Russian Federation in that direction," he said.
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