2 senators urge US to work with N. Korea
UN official denounces Pyongyang's actions
By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff, 12/27/2002
ASHINGTON - Two key US senators urged the Bush administration yesterday to work more closely with North Korea, even as the world's chief nuclear weapons inspector described Pyongyang's moves as ''nuclear brinkmanship.''
The Bush administration has refused to negotiate with the impoverished, neo-Stalinist state until it commits to stopping its nuclear weapons program and reinstalling monitoring equipment provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Sending a thinly veiled warning to North Korea, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asserted earlier this week that US military forces are capable of fighting two wars, if necessary, one in Iraq and one in the Pacific.
But top members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee suggested yesterday that the Bush administration take a softer tone and coordinate its efforts more closely with other nations, including Russia and China.
An attack on North Korea would ''be very inadvisable,'' Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana and the incoming committee chairman, said on NBC's ''Today'' show, adding that such a move would have ''devastating'' consequences for South Korea. ''Our strategy now has to be one of multilateral engagement,'' he said.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who will be the committee's highest-ranking Democrat, also urged a diplomatic approach. ''Well, I think the first relationship we have to improve or deal with is North Korea,'' Biden said on the ''Today'' program. He said the United States should involve France, Japan, China, Russia, and South Korea in its discussions.
In October, North Korea admitted that it had broken a 1994 accord to freeze its nuclear arms program. In response, the United States, Japan, and the European Union suspended shipments of heating oil to North Korea.
On Dec. 12, North Korea announced it would reopen three nuclear plants that could produce material for nuclear weapons. This week, Pyongyang said it was removing surveillance equipment that the International Atomic Energy Agency had installed at the plant in Yongbyon and unsealing a storage facility for about 8,000 nuclear fuel rods that can be used to make nuclear weapons.
The IAEA reported that North Korea has also moved 1,000 fresh fuel rods to the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.
''Moving toward restarting its nuclear facilities without appropriate safeguards and toward producing plutonium raises serious nonproliferation concerns and is tantamount to nuclear brinkmanship,'' said a statement released by Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The standoff has been an unwelcome burden for an administration trying to focus on Iraq. While the White House has shown more than a willingness to go to war with Iraq, officials in and out of the Bush administration say that a war with North Korea would be far more troublesome and dangerous.
Analysts say that North Korea almost certainly would retaliate by attacking South Korea, endangering the heavily populated capital of Seoul, as well as the 37,000 US soldiers stationed there.
Specialists also say that North Korea might present a more imminent danger than Iraq, because intelligence reports have indicated that Pyongyang might already have developed at least one nuclear weapon.
''The consequences for the South would be very grave, even if the outcome of the war would not be in doubt,'' said Lee Feinstein, senior adviser to former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright.
A National Security Council staff member said the president has no intention of invading or attacking North Korea and is eager to work with other nations to resolve the matter. But the official said that until Pyongyang begins living up to the 1994 agreement on arms, the White House will not negotiate or consider resuming oil shipments.
''We've made our view plain, what the north needs to do,'' the official said. ''North Korea's behavior makes progress impossible.''
The State Department has not yet decided how to respond to a Dec. 3 appeal from the United Nations World Food Program to help feed hungry North Koreans. Last year, the United States contributed about one quarter of the 155,000 tons of food provided by the program.
Analysts say that the insularity of North Korea makes it difficult to assess that government's strategy. Some believe that Pyongyang's gradual, admitted violations are an attempt to get attention and to force talks aimed at developing normalized diplomatic relations.
But unless the United States and other interested nations open a dialogue with North Korea, the situation will only worsen, said Lee Hamilton, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
''At this point, at least, [Bush's] position is that we'll not talk or negotiate with North Korea,'' Hamilton said. ''My view is that the only way to avoid a crisis is to push ahead with engagement with North Korea. Negotiation or discussion are not the equivalent of appeasement or blackmail.''
Feinstein said the Bush administration was making a mistake it made in the Middle East, declining to engage fully to resolve the problem and missing an opportunity to keep it from spiraling into a full-blown crisis.
''We need to speak directly to the North Koreans,'' Feinstein said. ''There's no reason why we can't talk to the North Koreans directly and sternly and tell them that the approach that they are taking will not work.
''Instead, we are relying on others to do our bidding, some of whom are allies and some of whom aren't,'' he said. ''Left to themselves, the North Koreans will make the situation worse. '' |
