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Top Experts, Officials See Obstacles on North Korea By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — A day before Chinese and Japanese officials announced North Korea’s refusal of an early resumption of negotiations on its nuclear program, top experts and officials yesterday listed verification and a U.S. hard line among potential obstacles to resolving the stalemate (see related GSN story, today). “We can’t be hopeful. At the same time, I don’t want to despair at this point,” South Korean Ambassador to the United States Han Sung-joo said at a U.S. Asia Pacific Council conference here. Han said he had hoped to make an announcement on new talks. “I was hoping that I could bring some news or, more importantly, good news on the six-party talks. Unfortunately, I don’t have any at the moment,” he said. The ambassador’s remarks were followed today by the announcement that Pyongyang preferred to gauge the direction of U.S. policy under re-elected President George W. Bush before agreeing to restart talks. Since April of last year, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have been in negotiations with North Korea over the country’s acknowledged plutonium-based nuclear-weapon program and its alleged uranium-enrichment efforts. U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said in a keynote speech at yesterday’s conference that despite setbacks in the North Korea talks, negotiations were the only way forward. “We can’t impose a policy on North Korea, dealing with the nuclear capability,” said Hagel, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee member and the co-chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. “America can lead, will lead, is expected to lead, but we can’t impose our will. We can’t dictate our will on other sovereign nations.” Outside verification of North Korea’s nuclear disarmament emerged at the conference as one potential sticking point in the process. Harvard University Kennedy School of Government professor Joseph Nye said North Korea’s record, including its refusal to acknowledge it is enriching uranium as the United States alleges, dimmed prospects for effective verification in any disarmament plan. Pyongyang’s evasiveness, said the former assistant U.S. defense secretary and National Intelligence Council chairman, “makes it very difficult to make progress on verification.” Trilateral Commission Chairman Thomas Foley said that given Bush’s electoral victory, however, there was little chance that the United States would accept any disarmament process without stringent verification measures. “The risk,” Foley said, “is that we’ll have such a hard attitude by the administration, and the regime-change proposals, that we won’t make any progress at all.” The former ambassador to Japan and speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives criticized talk of U.S. military options in the North Korea crisis (see GSN, Nov. 10). He expressed optimism that a “Bill Perry approach” — a step-by-step process of specific actions by both sides, like the one espoused by former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry — could gradually alleviate mistrust despite current tensions. Participants disagreed over whether a nuclear North Korea was inevitable. “I don’t think that’s the plan on the part of the United States, Japan, South Korea, and I don’t think that’s the plan that China has either,” said Han, who was South Korea’s foreign minister in 1993 and 1994. Han indicated talks could get a boost from a renewal of U.S. interest in the North Korean crisis after Bush’s re-election. With Washington focused on the threat of a “nuclear 9/11,” North Korea has been on the “back burner” for some time, he said. “I don’t think that this will stay that way for very long,” he said. “President Bush has accepted the six-party process and negotiation as his own property, and he has, in fact, claimed the authorship of the six-party process,” the ambassador said. The talks, Han said, should also be helped along by North Korea’s economic needs, a “very active” China and improving North Korean-South Korean relations. Han named “mistrust” and “insecurity” on the part of North Korea — in particular, about purported U.S. intentions to disarm North Korea entirely and seek “regime change” in Pyongyang — among the obstacles to successful talks. In an interview on the sidelines of the conference, East-West Center Director Muthiah Alagappa expressed concern about the “nuclearization of Asia,” a phenomenon he said is being insufficiently addressed. Whether or not “we … end up having to live with a nuclear North Korea,” he said, the United States and other countries must move beyond a nonproliferation focus in Asian strategy. Alagappa called for new doctrines and strategies to account for the presence of nuclear weapons in and around Asia — in India, Pakistan, Russia and the United States — and for the potential that Japan, South Korea and Taiwan could eventually obtain nuclear weapons. “A lot of people still talk using Cold War doctrines and strategies,” said Alagappa, whose center administers the U.S. Asia Pacific Council. The United States, Alagappa said, should make policy that better addresses Asia’s current nuclear landscape. Washington should seek strategies and systems to limit both vertical and horizontal proliferation, Alagappa said, and should also promote nuclear safety in Asia. “These weapons are not going to go away,” he said.
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