Rice Claims U.S. Role in Korean About-Face
By JOEL BRINKLEY
ANCHORAGE, July 13 - Returning from a six-day trip to Asia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her aides said Wednesday that North Korea's decision to return to nuclear disarmament talks was a vindication of the Bush administration's strategy and not solely the result of a South Korean offer to provide the North with electricity.
While some Asian officials, and even some administration officials, say they believe that South Korea's surprise offer last month to wipe away the North's energy problems broke the stalemate, Ms. Rice played down its significance. She portrayed it as an elaboration of the offer that the United States made during the last negotiating session, in June 2004.
"It was really a part of the June proposal that somehow North Korea's energy needs would have to be dealt with," she said, speaking to reporters on her plane. "And, of course, the South Korean proposal addresses it in a major way."
It is far from clear that the North Koreans are going to accept the offer. That will be determined in the talks, which open on July 25.
There are distinct advantages to having the initiative come from South Korea. The Bush administration can maintain that it has not broken President Bush's pledge not to improve the existing offer until the North responds to it at the negotiating table. At the same time, the North enters the talks knowing what specific benefits it can gain if it gives up its nuclear ambitions.
In the last year, Washington has urged the other parties to the six-nation disarmament talks - Russia, Japan and South Korea - to refrain from offering further incentives to the North and instead to push the Chinese to use their considerable leverage over its leaders to persuade them to return to the talks.
But China refused, so the South Koreans took the lead. On June 17, South Korea's unification minister, Chung Dong Young, traveled to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and met with the North's leader, Kim Jong Il. Mr. Chung promised that if North Korea abandoned its nuclear weapons program, South Korea, on its own, would string power lines across the border and begin delivering up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to solve the North's dire energy crisis.
In that same meeting, Mr. Kim said for the first time that the North was ready to rejoin the disarmament talks. The discussions in the weeks since then have been to decide when the new talks will take place and what will be discussed.
All of that was settled in Beijing on Saturday, during a dinner between Christopher R. Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea's deputy foreign minister.
A senior administration official traveling with Ms. Rice indicated that the Bush administration was startled, and pleasantly surprised, when the South Koreans told of their "very generous" energy offer, as this official put it.
Administration officials insisted that they did not know why North Korea had suddenly decided to return to the talks, but seemed to go out of their way to dismiss the South Korean offer.
"How do you know that the South Koreans made a difference?" Ms. Rice asked, in response to a question. "Have you been talking to the North Koreans about what made a difference? I think I can make the argument that a number of diplomatic efforts here by the Chinese, by the South Koreans, by the United States" were responsible. "The Japanese and the Russians have been involved too," she said.
The senior administration official described a continuum of activity in recent months that he said had helped convince the North Koreans to come around. First, he said, North Korea demanded security assurances from the United States. And while those assurances were already a part of the American proposal given to the North Koreans during the talks a year ago, "the United States made the decision to give the security assurances" again, he said, "and we gave them."
Earlier this year, Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice made public statements assuring North Korea that the United States would not attack it.
The official noted that the allies had also provided fuel oil as requested, food aid, economic assistance and public acknowledgment that the United States regarded North Korea as a sovereign state.
But none of that seemed to budge the North Koreans. In fact, their statements grew ever more bellicose as the months passed - so much so, the senior official said, that the United States asked China and South Korea this spring to tell the North to tone it down its language.
In the last few months, South Korea devised the energy plan and then told Washington about it. The senior official would not say whether the South Koreans told the United States about it before it was presented to Mr. Kim in Pyongyang last month. But Mr. Chung visited Washington in early July to talk about his meeting with Mr. Kim, and in those meetings he also talked about his energy plan. It was not made public until Tuesday afternoon, as Ms. Rice arrived in Seoul.
As late as Tuesday night - while Ms. Rice and her aides were preparing to meet with South Korea's leaders - a senor administration official directly involved in North Korea policy, said, "I haven't seen the proposal yet; you are asking me about something I haven't seen."
On Wednesday afternoon Ms. Rice said, "This has been a really intensive period of diplomacy over the last six weeks or so," culminating in North Korea's decision to return to negotiations.
Noting that the South Korean energy proposal is actually an extension of the offer already on the table, Ms. Rice added, "I think everybody deserves a good deal of credit for convincing the North Koreans that there were no bilateral off-ramps from the six-party talks." |
