U.S. Cancels Discussions With North Korea

July 4, 2002
By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Last weekend's skirmish between the two Koreas in the Yellow Sea has given ammunition to Bush administration hardliners who want to block new agreements with North Korea, Korea experts and U.S. officials say.

The administration's first high-level talks with North Korea, tentatively slated for July 10-12 in Pyongyang, were cancelled this week.

At stake is a process of peaceful non-proliferation begun by the Clinton administration that led the North Korean government to agree in 1994 to freeze a nuclear weapons program.

In the naval incident, four South Korean sailors died when a North Korean vessel opened fire near a disputed sea border. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said it had created an "unacceptable atmosphere" for talks that were to have been led on the U.S. side by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly.

But several U.S. officials and Korea experts said that some in the administration were looking for reasons to shelve what would have been the first major discussions since President Bush took office.

In January, Bush labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq. Even so, in April, North Korea accepted a U.S. offer for talks. In late June, the Bush administration replied and proposed the July dates.

In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin Powell indicated he wouldn't meet with North Koreans at a meeting of Asian nations in Brunei July 31. "I think we just have to let some time pass," he said. Last year, at the group's meeting in Hanoi, Powell shook hands with a North Korean diplomat.

Ignoring North Korea can have consequences. Historically, the authoritarian East Asian state has fomented crises when it feels neglected. Some say the recent naval skirmish, the first in three years, may have been a case in point.

"I'm afraid the North Koreans will think the only thing that will get our attention is rattling their sabers," says Kenneth Quinones, who helped shape Korea policy in the State Department in the Clinton and first Bush administrations.

North Korea has been weakened since the collapse of international communism and the loss of as many as 2 million of its 22 million people to starvation in the last decade. But it retains an army of a million men, massive conventional arms and, according to the CIA, one or two nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration has continued a 6-year-old policy of sending food aid to North Korea through the United Nations. But some officials, particularly at the White House and Pentagon, have made no secret of their dislike for the 1994 "agreed framework."

In it, North Korea said it would freeze its nuclear program in exchange for oil and two civilian nuclear reactors.

While Powell has talked about the benefits of engagement, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a speech in April that "truly evil regimes will never be reformed and ... such regimes must be confronted, not coddled."

The Bush administration also has been divided about whether to continue the Clinton administration's efforts to negotiate an agreement to stop the development and sale of ballistic missiles by the North Koreans.

Many in the State Department want to pick up where the Clinton administration left off, discussing compensation for a freeze on missile exports and testing. Others say North Korea must first agree to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate past nuclear activities, a provision of the 1994 accord.

"The dispute is between those who want to strike a new deal and those who want compliance with an old deal," says Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.

Some administration officials are trying to scrap one of the few areas of cooperation that has continued under the Bush administration: a program for joint recovery of Americans still missing in action from the 1950-53 Korean War. Remains of 152 MIAs have been found since 1996. There are 8,100 listed as missing. The first of three recovery missions scheduled this year will begin July 20.

But Frank Metersky of the Chosin Few, a group of Marines that fought in the major battle at the Chosin Reservoir, says the recovery program is being reviewed. A decision is expected by Monday.

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