posted July 11, 2005 01:42 PM            

U.S. diplomat Christopher Hill obliged during the "steak and cheesecake" dinner at a government restaurant and soon heard the ranking North Korean at the table say his government was willing to resume nuclear disarmament talks this month.

For more than a year, North Korea had shown contempt for the six-nation negotiating process by boycotting it. That has caused jitters in Washington and throughout Asia.

Participants at the Saturday night dinner raised a toast to the success of the revived diplomatic endeavor. Yet there are no guarantees the next round of talks would be any more productive than the first three, held in 2003 and 2004.

The new round will open in the Chinese capital during the week of July 25.

At the time of the dinner detente, Rice was nearing Beijing, where she planned talks with Chinese leaders about North Korea. Hill called the chief U.S. diplomat on her government plane just before the end of her 20-hour trip from Washington.

Hill, who heads the State Department's East Asia bureau, told Rice that the North Koreans had said their negotiators were intent on making progress toward the establishment of a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

If North Korea is sincere, it would represent a major policy shift for a country that is believed to have at least two nuclear weapons — and maybe several more.

North Korea withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in early 2003 and said it needs nuclear arms as a way to deter a possible U.S. attack.

The pending resumption of the talks was a rare bit of good news for the Bush administration on a highly troublesome issue. But Rice, while welcoming the North's decision, said it was just a first step.

"It is not the goal of the talks to have talks. The goal of the talks is to have progress," Rice told reporters Sunday.

"The issue now is for North Korea to make the strategic choice to give up its nuclear weapons program," she said before leaving for Thailand, her second stop on a four-country Asia swing that also includes visits to Japan and South Korea.

She added that the nuclear impasse was a concern not only of the U.S. but also its partners in the negotiations: China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

South Korea's main nuclear negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, said Sunday that the North's imminent return to the arms talks was the "fruit of the efforts" of all countries involved.

Japan reacted cautiously. "We hope that North Korea has a sincere and constructive attitude" at the talks and that they lead to "substantive" progress, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement.

North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying the resumption of talks "is important, but the most essential thing is for ... an in-depth discussion on ways of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula to make substantial progress in the talks."

North Korea "will do its utmost for it," according to the report.

Rice said a "tremendous flurry of diplomatic activity" — led by China and South Korea — contributed to North Korea's change of heart. U.S. officials also believe that the North's continuing economic woes may have contributed.

The officials point out that infrastructure investments by China in North Korea are way down. So, too, is aid from South Korea.

By getting rid of its nuclear weapons program and having that verified, North Korea should be able to count on substantial economic help from the China and South Korea as well as the U.S. and Japan.

Rice arrived in Thailand on Sunday night, landing in the resort city of Phuket. On Monday, she planned to review efforts to rebuild coastal areas devastated by last December's tsunami.

posted July 11, 2005 10:08 PM            

During the past year, there was Hillary with her own invective against the President...for not entering into 2 party negotiations with her friend Kim Jong-il. I say friend because it was the Clinton administration...in conjunction with the bungling incompetent boob Jimmy Carter...which set up an agreement to spend billions in building 2 lightwater nuclear reactors and donate hundreds of thousands of TONS of food to help the starving North Korean civilians...aid which Hillary's friend Kim promptly ripped off and distributed to his army. From the beginning, Kim Jong-il continued with his nuclear weapons program...which was only possible because the bungling Clinton administration didn't include any verification provisions in the agreement to prevent the little communist madman from doing exactly what he did.

posted July 11, 2005 10:25 PM              

By Donald Gregg and Don Oberdorfer

Wednesday, June 22, 2005; Page A21

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's remarkable statements to a South Korean envoy last Friday present a rare opportunity to move promptly toward ending the dangerous nuclear proliferation crisis in Northeast Asia. The Bush administration should seize the moment.

The reclusive leader told South Korea's minister of unification, Chung Dong Young, that he is willing to return to the six-nation talks on his nuclear weapons program if the United States "recognizes and respects" his country. More than that, according to Chung, he raised the prospect of reversing his burgeoning nuclear program, rejoining the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which he abandoned two years ago, and welcoming back U.N. nuclear inspectors in return for a credible security guarantee.

The U.S. national interest as well as the interests of our Asian partners in the talks -- all of whom favor much greater U.S. engagement with North Korea -- call for a positive response from Washington. This would be particularly welcome in Seoul, which both of us visited last week.

For starters, we suggest that President Bush, after touching base with our Asian partners -- South Korea, China, Japan and Russia -- communicate directly with Kim Jong Il to follow up on his remarks. He might consider offering to send Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill and Ambassador Joseph DeTrani to Pyongyang to prepare for a visit to Kim by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The purpose would be to explore the policies behind Kim's words to determine whether practical arrangements can be made, subject to approval by our partners in the six-nation talks, to end the dangerous North Korean nuclear program.

In efforts to reassure North Korea, the United States has repeatedly declared that it recognizes North Korean sovereignty, has no hostile intent and is willing to arrange security guarantees and move toward normal relations with Pyongyang once the nuclear issue is resolved. Kim's remarks present a golden opportunity to take the U.S. offers to the one and only person in North Korea who has the power of decision. According to those who have met him personally in the past -- including former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former South Korean president Kim Dae Jung and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi -- Kim is more flexible than anyone else in his government. That is not surprising, since he sets the line and others must follow.

As we well know, this is not the first time that Kim has sought engagement rather than hostility with President Bush, whom he discussed in surprisingly positive terms last Friday. During a visit we made to Pyongyang in November 2002 following a nuclear-related trip by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, we were given a written personal message from Kim to Bush declaring: "If the United States recognizes our sovereignty and assures non-aggression, it is our view that we should be able to find a way to resolve the nuclear issue in compliance with the demands of a new century." Further, he declared, "If the United States makes a bold decision, we will respond accordingly."

We took the message to senior officials at the White House and State Department and urged the administration to follow up on Kim's initiative, which we have not made public until now. Then deep in secret planning and a campaign of public persuasion for the invasion of Iraq, the administration spurned engagement with North Korea. Kim moved within weeks to expel the inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and reopen the plutonium-producing facilities that had been shut down since 1994 under an agreement negotiated with the Clinton administration.

Now the North Koreans are believed to have produced the raw material for at least a half-dozen nuclear weapons and many believe their claim to have fabricated the weapons themselves. Early this year North Korea declared that it has become "a full-fledged nuclear weapons state" and that it is working to produce still more atomic arms, all in response to U.S. hostility.

Kim's statements in Pyongyang Friday may be a sign that he is uncomfortable with persistent pressure from the United States and his Asian neighbors to return to the six-nation talks, which he left a year ago. He may also be feeling the pinch of deepening food shortages in his country. By reversing his nuclear program in return for the guarantees he seeks, Kim could avert stronger measures being discussed in Washington and other capitals to force the issue. These measures, in our judgment, promise only greater confrontation and growing danger on all sides.

By visiting Pyongyang and engaging Kim, Rice would not be condoning North Korea's human rights practices. The State Department has made clear that human rights is an issue to be resolved in negotiations on establishing full U.S. relations, not in talks on the nuclear question. If she responds to Kim's latest statements with a well-prepared visit and successful negotiations, Rice will have earned her spurs as America's chief diplomat.

Donald Gregg is a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea

posted July 11, 2005 10:31 PM              

Cooperation with US to continue behind the verbal sparring match

John Gittings, East Asia editor
Thursday April 4, 2002
The Guardian

North Korea has challenged President Bush to stop calling it part of the "axis of evil" by agreeing to resume dialogue with the US on the condition that it is not "slandered" again.

It said yesterday that it was responding to a proposal US officials made during recent meetings at the UN.

A foreign ministry spokesman in Pyongyang said his government had told the Americans that "groundless slanders against [North Korea] should not be repeated".

Article continues
The White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, confirmed that the US was ready for talks with the North but insisted that Mr Bush would "continue to speak out forthrightly".

As an apparent positive gesture, the White House is reported to have agreed to release $95m (£67m) to North Korea under the agreement reached in 1994 to replace the country's nuclear power programme.

Mr Bush has waived the requirement that international inspectors should examine North Korea's nuclear research facilities first.

Yesterday's North Korean announcement was timed to coincide with the first day of a visit to Pyongyang by Lim Dong-won, the special emissary of the South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung.

He is expected to meet the North's supreme leader, Kim Jong-il, who has dictated the pace of the North-South peace dialogue, slowing it almost to a halt after Mr Bush adopted a harder line than his predecessor.

During a visit to Seoul in February, Mr Bush repeated his description of the North as forming an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq

He said he was willing to re-open dialogue with the North, but he infuriated Pyongyang by condemning it for allegedly allowing its people to starve.

Last month North Korea threatened to pull out of the 1994 accord - which provides for an international consortium to build two nuclear reactors to replace the North's own programme - saying that Mr Bush's "hostile Korea policy" would force it to "examine all its agreements with Washington.

Pyongyang said yesterday that it would resume negotiations with the consortium.

Although the US will not apologise for the "axis of evil" label, renewed tension in the Korean peninsula would hardly serve its interests at a time of crises elsewhere. And North Korea has a record of verbal indignation which masks a willingness to continue to do business with the US, and receive aid.

Both sides have failed to stick to the letter of the 1994 agreement: North Korea refusing to let its facilities be inspected, the US letting work on the replacement reactors fall seriously behind. They should be completed next year but the foundations are not yet ready.

North Korea's verbal fire also masks its economic crisis and dependence on external aid.

In characteristic style, it is preparing to stage one of its cast-of-thousands dramatic extravaganzas which will last for two months spanning the period of the World Cup in South Korea and Japan.

The Arirang festival is described as a "mass gymnastic and artistic performance" with 100,000 participants, including "lovely children" and "famous [North] Korean artists".

Thousands of Pyongyang residents are already practising flower dances and coloured-board routines in parks and stadiums.

Officials parry questions about the cost by saying that people consider money no object in celebrating the genius of their great leader and the superiority of socialism.

A more practical aim is to attract a lot of foreign tourists, although only in strictly organised groups. Visitors will have little or no chance to gauge the situation outside Pyongyang where, the World Food Programme has warned, government food stocks will be exhausted within weeks and food aid will barely bridge the gap until the next harvest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,2763,678485,00.html

posted July 11, 2005 10:36 PM              

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 20, 2005; Page A01

In an effort to increase pressure on North Korea, the Bush administration told its Asian allies in briefings earlier this year that Pyongyang had exported nuclear material to Libya. That was a significant new charge, the first allegation that North Korea was helping to create a new nuclear weapons state.

But that is not what U.S. intelligence reported, according to two officials with detailed knowledge of the transaction. North Korea, according to the intelligence, had supplied uranium hexafluoride -- which can be enriched to weapons-grade uranium -- to Pakistan. It was Pakistan, a key U.S. ally with its own nuclear arsenal, that sold the material to Libya. The U.S. government had no evidence, the officials said, that North Korea knew of the second transaction.

Pakistan's role as both the buyer and the seller was concealed to cover up the part played by Washington's partner in the hunt for al Qaeda leaders, according to the officials, who discussed the issue on the condition of anonymity. In addition, a North Korea-Pakistan transfer would not have been news to the U.S. allies, which have known of such transfers for years and viewed them as a business matter between sovereign states.

The Bush administration's approach, intended to isolate North Korea, instead left allies increasingly doubtful as they began to learn that the briefings omitted essential details about the transaction, U.S. officials and foreign diplomats said in interviews. North Korea responded to public reports last month about the briefings by withdrawing from talks with its neighbors and the United States.

In an effort to repair the damage, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is traveling through East Asia this weekend trying to get the six-nation talks back on track. The impasse was expected to dominate talks today in Seoul and then Beijing, which wields the greatest influence with North Korea.

The new details follow a string of controversies concerning the Bush administration's use of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion in March 2003, the White House offered a public case against Iraq that concealed dissent on nearly every element of intelligence and included interpretations unsupported by the evidence.

A presidential commission studying U.S. intelligence is reviewing the case, as well as judgments on Iran and North Korea. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence also is reviewing evidence on nuclear, chemical and biological programs suspected in Iran and North Korea.

The United States briefed allies on North Korea in late January and early February. Shortly afterward, administration officials, speaking to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity, said North Korea had sold uranium hexafluoride to Libya. The officials said the briefing was arranged to share the information with China, South Korea and Japan ahead of a new round of hoped-for negotiations on North Korea's nuclear program.

But in recent days, two other U.S. officials said the briefings were hastily arranged after China and South Korea indicated they were considering bolting from six-party talks on North Korea. The talks have been seen as largely ineffectual, but the Bush administration, which refuses to meet bilaterally with Pyongyang, insists they are critical to curbing North Korea's nuclear program.

The White House declined to offer an official to comment by name about the new details concerning Pakistan. A prepared response attributed to a senior administration official said that the U.S. government "has provided allies with an accurate account of North Korea's nuclear proliferation activities."

Although the briefings did not mention Pakistan by name, the official said they made it clear that the sale went through the illicit network operated by Pakistan's top nuclear scientist, Abdel Qadeer Khan. But the briefings gave no indication that U.S. intelligence believes that the material had been bought by Pakistan and transferred there from North Korea in a container owned by the Pakistani government.

They also gave no indication that the uranium was then shipped via a Pakistani company to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and on to Libya. Those findings match assessments by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating Libya separately. Libya gave up its nuclear weapons program in December 2003.

Since Pakistan became a key U.S. ally in the hunt for al Qaeda leaders, the administration has not held President Pervez Musharraf accountable for actions taken by Khan while he was a member of Musharraf's cabinet and in charge of nuclear cooperation for the government.

"The administration is giving Pakistan a free ride when they don't deserve it and hurting U.S. interests at the same time," said Charles L. Pritchard, who was the Bush administration's special envoy for the North Korea talks until August 2003.

posted July 11, 2005 11:21 PM              

Pyongyang was progressing until US rightwingers showed up

Isabel Hilton
Tuesday February 11, 2003
The Guardian

The North Korean regime may be tyrannical, but it certainly has a sense of timing. As Colin Powell tracked the latest half mile across the shifting sands of the US administration's case against Iraq, North Korea announced that it had reactivated the Yongbyon nuclear plant - reminding us that there was little Powell could say about Iraq that was not more true of North Korea.

The North Korean crisis illustrates the inconsistency of US foreign policy. If there is little in the way of policy towards North Korea coming out of Washington, it is because, as the US administration knows, the North Korean case responds even less persuasively to the threat of force than does Iraq.

It is largely the threat from the US right that has got us into this position. North Korea is a test of the efficacy of the dominator mode that now rules in Washington. It is a test that it is likely to fail.

As a gesture to the Korean crisis, the US announced last week that it would be sending more warplanes to South Korea. US troops stationed there were warned that their tours may be extended. In South Korea, they don't know whether to laugh or cry. They know that if it comes to military action, South Korea will be the first to suffer followed, conceivably, by Japan. We are not talking about a few thousand Iraqis but potentially millions in east Asia.

The huge potential cost of a conflict with North Korea is one sound reason for the existence of the North Korean nuclear programme. No doubt the North Korean regime is deeply unpleasant, but it is not entirely illogical. Since the Korean war, it has understood that the disappearance of the Kim regime, and even of North Korea itself, is a long-term goal of US foreign policy. Deterring the US, therefore, has been its fundamental long-term objective.

Does this make North Korea dangerous? Potentially yes, but it does not make it irrational. It has had a nuclear weapons programme and an advanced missile programme - the best deterrent, the country reasons, to any future US assault. But at the same time it signalled that a secondary purpose was for use as a bargaining chip.

When the cold war ended, North Korea lost Soviet sponsorship. It became a liability to China and its economy was in a tragic state. It wanted to come in from the cold, and when in 1994 Clinton was prepared to negotiate, the result was the signing of the "agreed framework". This laid out a programme of verification and inspection, and secured a North Korean promise to stop developing weapons in return for fuel oil, and a US commitment to decommission North Korea's old nuclear reactors in favour of two safer US-built replacements.

It was the most important example of Pyongyang's interest in engagement, and it is worth remembering what the agreement achieved. North Korea agreed to close its reprocessing plant at Yongbyon and did so. Talks on other sites continued, but US negotiators were encouraged by the fact that, in the two years leading up to the signing of the treaty, North Korea had not extracted fuel rods from its reactors and did not extract any plutonium, a gesture that supported the contention the weapons programme was not its primary goal.

So what happened to the promises of 1994? In the US, Newt Gingrich happened. Clinton faced a Republican Congress led by a rightwing ideologue convinced that the North Korean regime was in a terminal state. (The same argument has been used for decades to nix negotiations with Cuba.) The US fell into technical default on the agreement and the nuclear power stations were never completed. Despite this, North Korea pursued diplomacy with South Korea, Japan and Israel. (The Israeli negotiations, in which Israel had agreed to buy a North Korean gold mine in return for a promise to stop exporting missiles to Iran, were halted by the US.)

When George W got to the White House and announced that he loathed North Korea, Pyongyang read it, not unreasonably, as a sign that diplomacy had entered a bear market. Given that the US proposes to spend more on missile defence this year than on the entire State Department, it is hard to argue with Pyongyang.

The present reactivation of the North Korean nuclear programme could be seen as an impulse to mass suicide, or, more likely, given its history, an attempt to bring the US back to the negotiating table. Failing negotiations, hardliners in North Korea might well argue, at least they need a nuclear shield against a trigger-happy Washington.

posted July 11, 2005 11:23 PM              

Rumsfeld Was on ABB Board
During Deal With North Korea
By Jacob Greber
Swissinfo
February 24, 2003

Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, was on the board of technology giant ABB when it won a deal to supply North Korea with two nuclear power plants. Weapons experts say waste material from the two reactors could be used for so-called “dirty bombs”.

The Swiss-based ABB on Friday told swissinfo that Rumsfeld was involved with the company in early 2000, when it netted a $200 million (SFr270million) contract with Pyongyang.The ABB contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho, on North Korea’s east coast. Rumsfeld – who is one of the Bush administration’s most strident “hardliners” on North Korea – was a member of ABB’s board between 1990 and February 2001, when he left to take up his current post.

Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB, told swissinfo that Rumsfeld “was at nearly all the board meetings” during his decade-long involvement with the company.

Maybe, maybe not

However, he declined to indicate whether Rumsfeld was made aware of the nuclear contract with North Korea.“This is a good question, but I couldn’t comment on that because we never disclose the protocols of the board meetings,” Eberhardt said.“Maybe this was a discussion point of the board, maybe not.”

The defense secretary’s role at ABB during the late 1990s has become a bone of contention in Washington. The ABB contract was a consequence of a 1994 deal between the US and Pyongyang to allow construction of two reactors in exchange for a freeze on the North’s nuclear weapons programme. North Korea revealed last year that it had secretly continued its nuclear weapons programme, despite its obligations under the deal with Washington.

The Bush government has repeatedly used the agreement to criticise the former Clinton administration for being too soft on North Korea. Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, has been among the most vocal critics of the 1994 weapons accord.

Dirty bombs

Weapons experts have also speculated that waste material from the two reactors could be used for so-called “dirty bombs”.Rumsfeld’s position at ABB could prove embarrassing for the Bush administration since while he was a director he was also active on issues of weapons proliferation, chairing the 1998 congressional Ballistic Missile Threat commission.

The commission suggested the Clinton-era deal with Pyongyang gave too much away because “North Korea maintains an active weapons of mass destruction programme, including a nuclear weapons programme”.

From Zurich to Pyongyang

At the same time, Rumsfeld was travelling to Zurich for ABB’s quarterly board-meetings.Eberhardt said it was possible that the North Korea deal never crossed the ABB boardroom desk.“At the time, we generated a lot of big orders in the power generation business [worth] around $1 billion…[so] a $200 million contract was, so to speak, a smaller one.”

When asked whether a deal with a country such as North Korea – a communist state with declared nuclear intentions – should have been brought to the ABB board’s attention, Eberhardt told swissinfo: “Yes, maybe. But so far we haven’t any evidence for that because the protocols were never disclosed. So maybe it was a discussion point, maybe not,” says Eberhardt.A Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clark, recently told “Newsweek” magazine that “Secretary Rumsfeld does not recall it being brought before the board at any time”.

It was a long time ago

Today, ABB says it no longer has any involvement with the North Korean power plants, due to come on line in 2007 and 2008.The company finalised the sale of its nuclear business in early 2000 to the British-based BNFL group.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/nkorea/2003/0224nuclear.htm