U.S. to take tough-minded approach to North Korea talks

By The Washington Post and Bloomberg News

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive

"Nuclear weapons won't make North Korea more secure, proliferation of nuclear weapons won't make North Korea more prosperous," Powell said in a speech at Princeton University.

The United States will join delegations from South Korea, China, Japan and Russia in Beijing on Wednesday to revive discussions with North Korea aimed at dismantling dictator Kim Jong Il's nuclear-weapons program.

At the root of the U.S. drive against regimes pursuing nuclear work is preventing the "fusion" of such weapons with terrorist groups, Powell said.

"Terrorism is the pre-eminent danger of our age," he said. "That is why defeating terrorism is our No. 1 priority."

North Korea's government news service yesterday accused the United States of a buildup of tanks and other weapons on the cease-fire line with South Korea in preparation for a preemptive attack on the communist country.

Powell said such "recrimination and threats" stood in the way of North Korea's understanding that it must agree to "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling" of its weapons program.

In Seoul, however, South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se Hyun said next week's talks are likely to succeed only through an agreement that allows North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions while also "saving face."

North Korea says it wants a security guarantee in exchange for dismantling its arms program. The U.S. says North Korea first must begin dismantling the program in a way that can be verified before the U.S. and allies offer economic aid or the security guarantee.

The thorniest issue is likely to be U.S. insistence that North Korea publicly acknowledge what U.S. intelligence officials say is a second, secret program to enrich uranium. U.S. officials say that North Korea privately admitted the program's existence during a meeting in October 2002, and in recent weeks, Pakistani metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed to having aided North Korea with its uranium program.

The North Korean government has publicly denied the second program's existence.
 
South Korean and Chinese officials are pressing for diplomatic language aimed at assuaging both sides.

Seoul is pushing a plan in which North Korea and the United States would sign on to a "first step," exchanging multilateral security assurances of a temporary freeze of "all nuclear programs," followed by their verifiable dismantling. Clarification of the uranium program could be worked out after that first step, along with North Korea's demands for economic and diplomatic incentives, high-ranking South Korean officials say.

"The U.S. says that the North Koreans have made progress with the enriched uranium program, but the North Koreans deny that," Jeong said. "If North Korea is forced to admit (to the uranium program), it would affect their pride. That would not be an effective way to go about this. We need to work out an arrangement."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company