U.S. Considers Non-Aggression Guarantees To NKorea
Bush employs a policy of 'diplomacy only' with NKorea
WASHINGTON, July 22 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – As North Korea reportedly may have as many as eight nuclear weapons by the end of the year if its nuclear program goes unchecked, the Bush administration considers offering the communist state guarantees that it will not come under attack from the United States, a leading U.S. newspaper reported Tuesday, July 22.
The offer, also including U.S. officials meeting with North Korean officials in Beijing, was conveyed last week to visiting Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo who was asked to inform the North Koreans, U.S. officials told the Washington Post.
As a condition for the meeting, however, the United States wants it to be followed almost immediately by multilateral talks that include South Korea, Japan and possibly Russia, the officials added.
They said that at the broader, multilateral meeting, the United States would formally unveil a plan for ending the crisis, which would open with discussion on how it could reassure Pyongyang it will not come under U.S. military attack.
Once that issue is settled, the meeting could move on to what one U.S. official called a "whole gamut" of issues between the United States and North Korea, including providing energy and food aid if the North Koreans meet a series of tough conditions, including progress on human rights.
The diplomatic activity - including a willingness to bend on the administration's previous insistence that its next meeting with North Korea must include South Korea and Japan - suggests the administration is actively looking for ways to defuse the crisis.
North Korea has long demanded that the United States sign a nonaggression pact, but it is highly unlikely such a treaty would be approved by the Senate, so any U.S. proposal may fall short of North Korean desires, said the Post.
The United States up to now has resisted Pyongyang's insistence on one-on-one talks, calling instead on a multilateral venue that would include South Korea, China and Japan.
China hosted a first round of talks on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions in April and has been trying to broker a second round. The first round ended with North Korean officials admitting that their country possessed nuclear weapons.
The crisis further took a down turn with Pyongyang fears of a “preemptive” U.S. attacks as was the case with Iraq – a member of the U.S.-labeled “axis of evil” along with North Korea and Iran. Officials in the Communist country said Iraq was attacked “due to its concessions and compromise”
Eight Nuke Weapons
"If NKorea continues on its present course, by the end of the year, I think we'll have about eight nuclear weapons,” Berry
In the meanwhile, a former U.S. defense secretary predicted late Monday that North Korea may have as many as eight nuclear weapons by the end of the year, if its nuclear program goes unchecked, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"If North Korea continues on its present course, by the end of the year, I think we'll have about eight nuclear weapons, and next year will be in serial production of about five to ten nuclear weapon as year," said William Perry, who also served as special envoy to North Korea during the administration of former President Bill Clinton.
Perry, who caused a stir last week by warning that Washington and Pyongyang could be at war as early as this year, said the hermit nation might soon have enough nuclear weapons to target Japan and South Korea while offering leftover plutonium for sale to the highest bidder.
"I consider that this poses an unacceptable risk to our security," the former defense secretary argued in an interview with PBS television's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" program.
"There are plenty of bidders out there willing to bid for it," he continued.
"And if any of the terror groups are willing to get nuclear weapons or are able to get that plutonium, then we could see it end up in an American city."
Perry also took an implicit swipe at President George W. Bush's national missile defense program that calls for deploying missile interceptors around the world to shoot down hostile missiles fired at the United States and its allies by rogue nations like North Korea and Iran.
He said he did not see a danger coming from North Korean missiles fired at the United States but rather from possible North Korean sales of fissile materials.
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington research organization, recently completed a "worst case" study of the possibility that North Korea could have a secret reprocessing plant.
In that study he determined that the amount of krypton released from reprocessing "would barely be above background level" -- the amount contained in normal air. Given the small amounts, Albright said, "there would be almost no chance to determine the direction from which it came."
Berry questioned the effectiveness of trying to defuse the North Korea crisis with the help of neighboring countries, although he said participation of nations like South Korea, Japan and China was important.
"But I also believe that to solve this problem we have to deal directly with the North Koreans," Perry said. "We cannot outsource the problem this serious to other countries to solve."
Bush, who has been calling for intercepting suspected shipments from rogue states, on Monday warned North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il that developing nuclear weapons would "alienate" him from the world.
But he shrugged off reports that Pyongyang had opened a second plant to process plutonium, concealed to avoid detection by U.S. satellites.
"The desire by the North Koreans to convince the world that they are in the process of developing a nuclear arsenal is nothing new, we have known that for a while," Bush said at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Bush said he still believed the nuclear crisis could be solved diplomatically. |
