North Korea Could Receive New Disarmament Incentives

The Bush administration has indicated that it is ready to offer new incentives for North Korea to end its nuclear weapons effort, the New York Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 17).

Delegates from Washington discussed their plans during meetings with officials from China, Japan, Russia and South Korea on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vietnam.

Details of the discussions were limited. 

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice indicated that one incentive might be North Korea’s eventual admission into the 21-nation economic cooperation group.

U.S. officials have also previously indicated that the United States might sign a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War.

Pyongyang is likely to demand more to eliminate its decades-old nuclear weapons program, diplomats said.  The five nations negotiating with North Korea in the six-party talks are developing “more immediate elements” of an incentives offer, a senior Bush administration official told the Times.

U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley said the North must take “concrete steps.”  He would not specifically address three potential actions being debated by U.S. and Asian officials:  immediate closure of a 5-megawatt North Korean reactor, shuttering a reprocessing site that produces plutonium fuel, and resumption of international inspections of North Korean nuclear sites.

“Generically, those are the kinds of things one might think about,” Hadley said (Cooper/Sanger, New York Times, Nov. 19).

APEC nations, in an informal statement, labeled Pyongyang’s Oct. 9 nuclear test and its missile launches in July “a nuclear threat” to global peace and security, the Los Angeles Times reported.  Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet, reading the statement, urged complete implementation of the U.N. Security Council sanctions issued against North Korea following the nuclear detonation (James Gerstenzang, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 20).

Washington had hoped the APEC nations would issue an official, written document on North Korea, the Washington Post reported.  Deputy national security adviser David McCormick said the statement constituted movement in the right direction and illustrated a “common view on the importance of successful implementation of the [U.N.] resolution” (Michael Fletcher, Washington Post I, Nov. 20).

President George W. Bush was also unable to persuade South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to fully institute the U.N. sanctions, the Post reported.

“Although the Republic of Korea is not taking part in the full scope of the [U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative], we support the principles and goals of the PSI and will fully cooperate in preventing WMD material transfer,” Roh said.

The initiative is aimed at intercepting unconventional weapons and material on the high seas.  Seoul has refrained from fully joining out of concern over heightened tensions with Pyongyang (Michael Fletcher, Washington Post II, Nov. 19).

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, lead U.S. envoy to the six-party talks, is scheduled to visit China this week for additional talks on the “concrete steps” Pyongyang must take to prove its commitment to disarming, Reuters reported.

Beijing and Washington appear to be moving toward agreement on what would be expected of North Korea at the next set of negotiations, which could occur next month.

“We are doing very well with the five parties (other than North Korea) in terms of what we want the North Koreans to do,” a U.S. official said (Arshad Mohammed, Reuters/Washington Post, Nov. 19).

Meanwhile, Japanese authorities are investigating whether Korean nationals living in Japan might have passed on technological secrets to North Korea, Agence France-Presse reported Saturday.

Investigation of the “Kaken” science and technology group began after documents were found indicating that the association functioned under the direct control of the North Korean national science institute, according to the Sankei Shimbun newspaper.

Some leaked Japanese scientific knowledge might have aided North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests this year, according to the newspaper.

Roughly 1,200 Koreans work as researchers in Japan in areas such as atomic engineering, nuclear physics, semiconductors and biochemistry, Sankei reported (Agence France-Presse, Nov. 18).

Pyongyang yesterday blasted a suggestion made this month by professors at South Korea’s air force academy that Seoul should prepare a military strategy that allows for offensive operations.  South Korea’s present strategy allows only for defense, the Associated Press reported.

“The pre-emptive attack on the North means provocation of a nuclear war,” according to the North Korean Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland (Associated Press I/International Herald Tribune, Nov. 19).

Elsewhere, the Group of 20 developing nations yesterday criticized North Korea for carrying out its nuclear test, AP reported.

“All of the countries at the G-20 deplore that test and the instability that it threatens of the Korean Peninsula,” Australian Treasurer Peter Costello said following the end of the two-day meeting in Melbourne of finance ministers and central bankers (Kelly Olsen, Associated Press/ABC News, Nov. 19).

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