U.S., North Korea Reportedly Prepare for Talks

NTI: Working-level officials from North Korea and the United States are reportedly scheduled to meet later this month to discuss stalled nuclear disarmament talks and U.S. financial regulatory actions against Pyongyang, the Yonhap News Agency reported today (see GSN, Feb. 2).

The Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun cited diplomatic sources in Washington as saying that the two sides plan to meet in Washington (Yonhap News Agency/Korea Times, Feb. 6).

Even if multilateral nuclear talks were to resume, chances are slim for a negotiated settlement, current and former U.S. officials told the Washington Post.

There is a “good chance that [Pyongyang] will give the appearance of agreement to the six-party process in the hopes of keeping the pressure off them, slowing down the process and avoiding [making] a choice they don’t want to make — which is give up their nuclear weapons,” said Michael Green, the recently departed White House senior director for Asia policy.

The September agreement, in which North Korea agreed in principle to give up its nuclear programs, “was not a strategic decision by North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons,” said Green, now a professor at Georgetown University and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It was a tactical decision to sign on to the process. The key now is to use the process to force them to make the decision to give up their weapons.”

Immediately following that agreement, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill hoped to visit North Korea, the Post reported yesterday. However, because North Korea refused to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor as a show of good faith, the visit never materialized, the officials said.

That was a “missed opportunity,” South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said last month. “We really hoped that if Assistant Secretary Hill’s visit was realized, that might have helped in creating a better atmosphere for resolution of this nuclear issue.”

If negotiations resume, the United States is prepared to compensate North Korea for freezing and dismantling its programs, U.S. officials said. However, one top U.S. official admitted that the issue was “sidelined now as all eyes are on Iran.”

The criminal activities that the United States has accused North Korea of conducting account for 35 to 40 percent of the country’s exports and an even higher percentage of its total earnings, said David Asher, a former State Department official who until July helped manage the U.S. “illicit activities initiative” against North Korea (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Feb. 5).

Meanwhile, a group of U.S. senators has requested that Bush declassify an intelligence report on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, Agence France-Presse reported Friday.

A comprehensive national intelligence estimate of North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities was recently completed at the request of Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.). Reid and three other senior Democratic senators requested “a declassified version of that [estimate] so that Congress can have at hand accurate information about the current threat and engage in a full and free debate about the best policy on North Korea going forward.”

“We urge you to clearly describe to America and the Congress your policies on North Korea so that we can begin, in a bipartisan effort, to put U.S. policy on a more productive path that reduces the threat to U.S. national security,” the senators told Bush in writing on Friday (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 3).