Richardson Urges Nonaggression Pact with N.Korea
story.news.yahoo.com
By Mark Egan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. diplomatic trouble-shooter Bill Richardson on Sunday urged the Bush administration to open talks with North Korea (news - web sites) aimed at negotiating a nonaggression pact to defuse nuclear tension with the communist state.
Fresh from almost nine hours of talks with North Korean officials, Richardson said the United States must start talks through United Nations (news - web sites) channels to end the crisis.
"What I think the administration needs to do, with all due respect, is just pick up the phone, start the preliminary talks at the U.N. in New York at a low level to set up broader talks," Richardson said on ABC's "This Week" program.
Richardson, a Democrat and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, met with Han Song Ryol, a high-ranking member of the North Korean delegation to the United Nations, and others over three days in the state of New Mexico. He said he had fully briefed Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites), including writing a lengthy report.
Richardson, who is now governor of New Mexico, disagreed with State Department officials who said after the talks that the North Koreans had failed to address "issues of concern."
He said the secretive communist nation had significantly signaled a willingness to discuss its nuclear program in negotiations, and had said it did not plan to build nuclear weapons.
"What I would suggest ... is a bilateral nonaggression binding pact that basically says the United States is ready to agree that North Korea is not going to be treated in an aggressive, hostile fashion, in other words, that we're not going to attack North Korea," Richardson said.
DIRECT TALKS IMPORTANT
"It's important that direct talks happen. I can't stress how important that is. And it can be at the technical level, low level, starting to the higher level," he added.
Washington could in turn demand the freezing and possible closure of North Korea's Soviet-built Yongbyon plant -- the plant believed to be at the center of the country's covert nuclear weapons program, which North Korean officials have said could be operable within weeks.
He also said Washington should seek commitments on the verification of nuclear weapons programs in North Korea, allowing for the return of international inspectors who could ensure any nuclear program was for peaceful purposes only.
The North Koreans sought permission for two diplomats to speak with Richardson last week and got it from Washington.
Richardson has a history of negotiation with the North Koreans that includes brokering the release of a U.S. soldier in 1994 whose helicopter had entered the country's air space and the release in 1996 of a young U.S. citizen who was being held on spy charges.
On the same ABC news program on Sunday, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona called for economic sanctions against North Korea, calling Pyongyang an, "Orwellian Stalinist regime ruled by a sociopath." But Richardson dismissed the need for sanctions against the desperately-poor country and said that Washington should not take Pyongyang's public rhetoric about war seriously.
"They're intensifying the rhetoric, they're laying out their cards, they're being belligerent, in preparation, I believe, for a negotiation," Richardson said.
North Korea, suspected by the United States of making nuclear bombs and of possibly already having two, said on Friday it was pulling out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), triggering worldwide condemnation.
Analysts say Pyongyang and its secretive leader have been anxious for the survival of their administration ever since President Bush (news - web sites) last year called North Korea part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran.
Richardson said that language had been counterproductive.
"It doesn't make sense also to provoke them. And ... the axis of evil statement in the past was not helpful," he said.
North Korea has caused alarm across the world since it disabled U.N. nuclear monitoring equipment and expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors last month.
A U.S. envoy arrived in Seoul on Sunday to try to defuse the crisis. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Kelly was on his first visit to the region since October, when he said Pyongyang had admitted developing a nuclear arms program.
Meanwhile North Korea hurled fresh invective at the United States, saying it could disappear in "a sea of fire" if it attacked and again denied that Pyongyang had ever told the United States about having a nuclear arms program. |
