Toasts and Hopes for a Better Day: Albright's Visit to North Korea Recalled
Published: Jan 12, 2003
It was October 2000, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, on a groundbreaking visit to North Korea, spoke of the need to end the "bitterness of the past." Chairman Kim Jong Il talked of a new "historical point" between the two former wartime rivals.
A scant 15 months later, President Bush designated North Korea as a charter member of an international "axis of evil."
He pledged in a State of the Union address that the United States would not permit North Korea and other dangerous nations "to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
Against the background of the recent escalation of tensions, the images of America's top diplomat making the rounds of North Korea's capital three falls ago seem almost surreal: toasts in Pyongyang with Kim and greetings, with Kim and President Clinton's top diplomat clasping all four hands in a knot and smiling broadly.
The good feelings would not last. Soon Albright and her Democratic boss were gone from power.
When a new president from a different party takes over the White House, there are often differences in emphasis on key foreign policy issues. But overall continuity, not wild swings, usually is the norm.
North Korea is an exception.
Clinton believed that it was possible to work with North Korea. Bush has always been skeptical.
To some, Clinton's decision to dispatch Albright to North Korea is looking highly questionable following the North's acknowledgment that, even as Kim was toasting Albright, it had been developing uranium-based nuclear weapons in violation of agreements.
North Korea has followed up that disclosure by threatening to restart plutonium production and by withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the centerpiece of the global arms control effort.
Former Clinton administration officials defend Albright's trip and have serious questions about how Bush is dealing with the communist country.
Wendy Sherman, who served as State Department counselor under Albright, recalled that the central purpose of Albright's visit was to lay the groundwork for an agreement to curb the North's missile program in exchange for economic benefits from the United States.
"If you don't have missiles it's hard to deliver a bomb," said Sherman, a key architect of North Korea policy under Albright.
The hope was that with the establishment of beneficial ties, mostly economic, with the United States and other developed countries, North Korea would be "less likely to do bad things because they would have much more to lose," Sherman said.
The Bush administration was prepared to go down the same path with North Korea but that offer is now off the table in light of the North's defiance.
Sherman said it was unfortunate that Bush designated North Korea as "evil."
"I don't think the White House appreciates how that would be heard by North Korea," she said. I don't think that alone has created the crisis but it is one of the rallying points used by North Korea" in justifying its current policy of intimidation and proliferation.
Sherman staunchly defends the 1994 U.S.-North Korean agreement under which the North agreed to freeze its plutonium production program in exchange for two new plutonium-resistant reactors financed by South Korea and Japan.
The agreement was successful for a time, Sherman said, because without it, "North Korea would have had the capability to have 50 to 100 bombs by now."
North Korea has now declared that agreement to be nullified, although construction on the nuclear reactors has not yet stopped.
Ivo Daalder, a National Security Council aide in the Clinton administration, contended it is unseemly for Republicans to ridicule Clinton's effort to reach out to North Korea.
He said Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, in their efforts to induce North Korea to reverse course, have taken the military option off the table, something Clinton never did.
"If Clinton had done that, the Republicans would have started impeachment hearings," Daalder said.
Daalder also finds fault with Powell's seemingly dismissive attitude toward the possibility that North Korea's nuclear arsenal could jump from two to six in a matter of months.
"If they have a few more, they have a few more," Powell said two weeks ago. Daalder said a North Korea armed with six nuclear weapons could credibly threaten multiple targets and still have enough left over to sell some.
Bush administration officials insist they have not acquiesced in North Korea's weapons development program, pointing out that they seeking the dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs through diplomatic pressure.
AP-ES-01-12-03 1319EST