In Policy Shift, U.S. Will Talk to North Korea.
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In Policy Shift, U.S. Will Talk to North Korea
Thu Sep 26, 9:40 AM ET
By DAVID E. SANGER The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 President Bush ( news - web sites) will send a senior American diplomat to North Korea ( news - web sites) early next month, the White House said today, ending 20 months of internal debate on whether to open talks with a country that Mr. Bush lumped with Iran and Iraq as part of an "axis of evil."
The announcement, which came only days after a visit to North Korea by Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, was a significant change of strategy for the administration, which had ended similar negotiations pursued with North Korea by President Clinton ( news - web sites) shortly before he left office.
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The administration has for months been signaling a readiness to reopen talks at a senior level; the official traveling to the North will be James A. Kelly, an assistant secretary of state with long experience in Asia. But the trip was delayed after a North Korean incursion into South Korean waters in June.
Administration officials say they intend to have a wide-ranging discussion with North Korea that will cover its missile production and exports, its huge array of conventional weapons within reach of South Korea ( news - web sites) and its history of repression. There will undoubtedly be revived talk about its nuclear program, which has been frozen since 1994 under an agreement with the United States.
The timing of the White House announcement was significant, because the stance on North Korea contrasts so sharply with Mr. Bush's approach to Iraq. Administration officials have gone to some lengths in recent weeks to explain why they think diplomacy can work with Kim Jong Il of North Korea but not with Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites). Like Iraq, North Korea has an extensive nuclear program, chemical weapons, links to terrorism and a history of shell games with nuclear inspectors.
Moreover, the Central Intelligence Agency ( news - web sites) has estimated that North Korea has produced enough fissile material to produce at least two nuclear weapons; so far the agency has concluded that Iraq does not have the material to produce a nuclear device but could obtain it in coming years.
The White House made the announcement after Mr. Bush talked by telephone to President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea, who had urged the United States to make such a move more than a year ago.
Mr. Bush rebuffed President Kim at the time, saying he did not trust the North Korean leader. The rebuff was an early victory for hawks in the administration, who argued that North Korea would never fulfill its commitments. It was also an early defeat for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who argued that there was little risk in picking up where Mr. Clinton had left off.
Now, 20 months into his presidency, Mr. Bush appears to be doing exactly that, although the White House insists that the talks will be on a much wider range of issues than Mr. Clinton was attempting.
"The two leaders agreed that real progress with the North depends on full resolution of the security issues on the Korean Peninsula," Ari Fleischer ( news - web sites), the White House press secretary, told reporters today. The State Department said lower-level meetings with North Korean officials at the United Nations ( news - web sites) this week had paved the way for the trip.
A meeting at this moment may well serve the needs of both Mr. Bush and the reclusive North Korean leader who, eight years after the death of his father, is suddenly trying to take the country in new directions.
Mr. Bush can use the Korea diplomacy, even if it fails, as evidence of willingness to negotiate with governments he detests excepting Iraq. "We are determined," one senior administration official said, "to make it clear we don't think one size fits all. We're not looking for confrontation."
Kim Jong Il, Korea experts note, sees the United States as the key to his hopes for economic reform, which are pinned on a new capitalist trade and investment zone he says he wants to create. South Korea, Japan, Russia and China would be the main trading partners and investors in this zone planned for northwestern North Korea. But the success of any such venture ultimately rests on a gradual improvement in relations with the United States.
Mr. Kim stepped in that direction last week by telling Mr. Koizumi that he was extending the moratorium on missile testing, and by apologizing for the North Korean intelligence services' abduction of Japanese citizens decades ago.
"This is a start," said Leonard S. Spector, director of the Washington office of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a longtime observer of North Korea. "But the reality is that we lost a year and a half when there might have been progress."
Secretary Powell had sought that progress from the start, after the departing Clinton administration briefed him and other Bush administration officials on the talks concerning a comprehensive missile deal. Kim Jong Il had said that North Korea would freeze development, production, deployment and testing of missiles that could fly more than 300 miles in return for the free launching of several civilian satellites every year. He had also agreed to halt missile and missile-related exports in particular to Iran, a major customer in exchange for some kind of compensation, which was never fully negotiated.
But several issues remained to be resolved, including North Korea's refusal to eliminate its existing missile forces, and how to establish a system for independent verification.
"I don't think the Clinton team was as close to a deal as they might lead you to think," one of Mr. Bush's senior national security advisers said last month. "We have a lot of work to do to expand the agenda and that means talking about all their conventional weapons within reach of Seoul."
Any negotiations are bound to be long and difficult. It is far from clear that the administration is willing to compensate North Korea for giving up missile exports. Nor is it clear that the North would be willing to pull back from the demilitarized zone; with its economy in a shambles, the North's ability to wipe out Seoul with a devastating attack is about the only card it still has to play.
Mr. Fleischer suggested today that North Korea could expect some discussion of the need to change its way of governance not a subject its leaders have entertained so far.
"Their current system is a failure, and it has failed its own people more than anybody else," he said |
