Posted on 04/10/2005 2:07:39 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Scholar: N. Korea Won't Dismantle Weapons
Sat Apr 9, 3:30 PM ET
By JOE McDONALD, Associated Press Writer
BEIJING - North Korea says it won't even discuss dismantling its nuclear weapons until Washington has normalized relations, a U.S. scholar who visited the North said Saturday.
The new demand for formal relations is a victory for North Korean hard-liners and adds another complication to stalled talks on North Korea's nuclear program, according to Selig Harrison, a Washington-based researcher. He said it reflects frustration at a lack of results from contacts with Washington and fears of a U.S. attack.
"The chance to negotiate is gone," Harrison said. "They told me that they are not prepared to discuss dismantling their nuclear weapons until their relations with the United States, economic and diplomatic, have been normalized."
North Korean officials also said they will not return to the six-nation talks organized by China until Washington apologizes for listing the North among the world's "outposts of tyranny," he said.
The North declared in February that it had nuclear weapons, though outsiders have seen no proof.
Three rounds of talks on demands for the North to give up its nuclear ambitions have produced no settlement. Participants, which also include South Korea, Japan and Russia, missed a September target for holding a new round when the North refused to take part.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested last month that the North could face sanctions if talks fail.
Harrison said despite such pressure, North Korean officials rejected a proposal under discussion in earlier talks to give up their nuclear program in stages in exchange for aid.
China and South Korea supported that plan, though Washington has refused to provide any aid until after the North's program is completely dismantled. Washington says it does not object to others providing aid in advance so long as Pyongyang has committed to that goal.
Harrison said he met this week with Kim Yong Nam, head of North Korea's legislature; Vice Foreign Ministry Kang Sok Ju; and Kim Gye Gwan, the North's envoy to the nuclear talks. He said he did not meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
Harrison has visited the North nine times since 1972. He is director of the Asia Project of the Center for International Policy and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, two Washington think tanks.
"The body language and my entire experience there this time made me more prepared to believe that they have some operational weapons," he said.
The dispute erupted in late 2002 when the United States said the North admitted having a nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement that gave the impoverished country energy aid.
Diplomats say the North hoped the 1994 agreement would lead to normal relations with Washington.
In exchange for giving up nuclear development, Pyongyang has demanded aid and a treaty committing the United States not to use force against the North, its enemy in the 1950-53 Korean War.
The Bush administration has refused to sign such a treaty but says it would promise not to invade. Forming diplomatic relations could require Washington to sign a "treaty of friendship" with Pyongyang — the sort of commitment that the North wants.
China, the North's main aid donor, has tried without success to prod Pyongyang back into talks. Analysts say Beijing might not be using its full leverage against the North, hoping instead for a U.S. concession that would bring Pyongyang back willingly.
Kang, the North's vice foreign minister, visited Beijing last week but no agreements were announced. Harrison said Kang would not discuss his meetings with Chinese officials.
The North Korean leaders said the most that Pyongyang was willing to offer before Washington agrees to diplomatic relations is to freeze its nuclear weapons development at current levels, Harrison said.
That includes a reactor at Yongbyon that experts say could produce plutonium for weapons.
The North Koreans are preparing to unload fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor during the next two months, adding to the urgency of resuming talks, Harrison said.
"They will have more plutonium unless there is a freeze," he said.
Harrison said during his visit, a senior North Korean general warned against Washington trying to impose an embargo, saying it would trigger retaliation by Pyongyang.
"That would be the beginning of a war and we would have the right to attack the U.S., including the U.S. mainland," Harrison quoted Gen. Ri Chan Bok, the North's commander on its heavily armed frontier with South Korea, as saying.
Harrison said North Korean officials were insisting on the formal commitment to peace out of concern that President Bush was pursuing a "regime change" in the North, just like he did in Iraq.
"They really do feel threatened," Harrison said.
(Kyodo) _ North Korea has said it is willing to negotiate ways to prevent the transfer of its fissile material to a third party, warning that it has the ability to hand it over to terrorists, a U.S. scholar who visited Pyongyang said. Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, told reporters in Beijing the comments were made by North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan.
Harrison quoted Kim as saying that although North Korea is not thinking of transferring fissile materials to others, it cannot promise it will not do so if "the United States drives us into a corner."
"The United States should consider the danger that we could transfer nuclear weapons to terrorists, that we have the ability to do so," Harrison quoted Kim as saying.
"It is too late for them to prevent us from making nuclear weapons, but it is not too late to work out verifiable agreements to prevent any proliferation," Harrison quoted Kim as saying.
Kim's comments mark the first known instance in which a senior North Korean official remarked on the possibility of nuclear proliferation, a scenario the United States wants to avoid.
Kim is North Korea's chief negotiator in the six-way talks on the North's nuclear arms programs.
North Korea said through its official media March 31 that the six-way negotiations should evolve into disarmament talks now that Pyongyang has declared it has nuclear weapons.
Kim's comments may indicate that disarmament talks the North was referring to in the March 31 statement was a call for negotiations to prevent nuclear proliferation.
According to Harrison, Kim also said North Korea will not discuss abandoning its nuclear weapons until it can normalize relations with the United States.
Harrison said that during his stay in North Korea, he also met with North Korea's No. 2 leader Kim Yong Nam as well as First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju.
Harrison quoted the officials as saying North Korea would return to the stalled six-way talks if the United States apologizes for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's comments calling North Korea an "outpost of tyranny," or if it gives "some other gesture" that it is not seeking an end to the North's current regime.
The six parties -- North and South Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia -- have met for three rounds of talks since August 2003.
A fourth round failed to materialize in September after North Korea refused to attend, citing what it called a "hostile" U.S. attitude.
Insistence on normalization with U.S. is not surprising, because it has been their long-standing objective. Their action seems over the top to others. However, to me, their overall behavior has been eminently predictable. What is not predictable has been only the timing of their movements.
And what a mistake to sell a terrorist organization nuclear material . Talk about big trouble in little NK .....
For Kim Jong-il, either he has a resounding victory or goes down as Hitler No.2. As you said, it is a poker game of staggering stake. Apparently he wants it that way. He has this mentality of going for something staggering. He does not seem to feel that he is not a mere mortal but godly. He seems to live through his manufactured myth, which became his ego.
There for a few months it seemed there was going to be a new leader of NK , but obviously things worked out....
You're correct about Jong-il. He is even a wild card to the Chinese, who are the ultimate wild card in this whole deck. Kim could possibly even make a move without China's blessing---not likely---but possible given his instability.
It would be a terrible war and one hell of a fight, but I can tell you that if North Korea makes a move against the South, they will claw him to death.
This is the same North Korea that demanded Europe boycott "Team America: World Police". Kim Jong Il is going to make demands as long as he has a voice. He's not a rational individual, he decides what he wants and then applies as much force as necessary to get it. He's the most dangerous kind of despot, one who has no fear of his own destruction, because the thought has never occurred to him that he might lose, and his advisers certainly won't tell him it's a possibility if they want to keep their testicles. I seriously doubt that negotiations are going to have any effect. This "little Cold War" will end in either an assassination or a war. If it ends in war, we had better be prepared to nuke the North, because they won't hold back.
If a nuclear device explodes on the US mainland, North Korea should be completely and utterly wiped off the face of the planet. That should be done whether proof of their involvement is ever positively proven. Their own words have now made them guilty by association.
The whole N. Korean propaganda project the image of N. Korea as a small nation which nevertheless goes for staggering stakes and always prevails, and it is solely due to "Great/Dear Leader."
Kim Jong-il used to be a propaganda chief to orchestrate this campaign. This became what he is. In the current context, that means he only conducts foreign policy according to this preconceived setting. He wants to make the whole international dealing a real-life propaganda drama.
They're really asking for it, aren't they.
Yep.
Those intransigent and warlike Republicans won't even normalize relations with poor little North Korea. How can they talk without trading diplomats? How can the people of North Korea feel secure enough to give up their nukes with those nasty Republicans threatening them? It wouldn't harm us a bit to normalize relations... So it would go.
The NKoms would hide the weapons, the IAEA would bless North Korea's dismantling of their programme, North Korea could export to the US (with nukes in containers), and Hillary! basks in the glow of a foreign policy "triumph," having legitimized total evil.
The posturing soundbites have already begun.
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