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Bush Ready to Offer North Korea Written Security Pledge, Not Treaty
Reinforcing recent comments by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, President George W. Bush yesterday suggested that the United States could offer written security assurances to North Korea if Pyongyang showed significant progress toward dismantling its nuclear program (see GSN, Oct. 14). The assurances would not take the form of a treaty, Bush said. “We will not have a treaty, if that’s what you’re asking. That’s off the table,” Bush told reporters yesterday during a photo opportunity with Thai Prime Minister Taksin Shinawata on the eve of a summit of Asian-Pacific leaders in Bangkok (David Sanger, New York Times, Oct. 20). “Perhaps there are other ways we can look at to say exactly what I said publicly on paper, with our partners’ consent,” Bush said, referring to past statements that the United States has no plans to attack North Korea. U.S. officials said the Bush administration would only consider a written nonaggression promise as part of a multilateral pledge offered in conjunction with North Korea’s neighbors. North Korea has previously insisted on a bilateral pact, however, according to the Los Angeles Times. The United States is unwilling to pursue a bilateral agreement because North Korea has violated such agreements in the past, including the 1994 Agreed Framework to end nuclear activities in North Korea, according to U.S. officials. “So we’re not likely to go back down that road,” national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said yesterday on ABC’s This Week. “But we will be more than willing to talk about how, within the six-party context, we can address the North Korea security concerns in concrete ways,” she added. U.S. officials said they believed North Korea was less likely to violate an agreement that included its traditional allies China and Russia. In any case, the nonaggression pledge would probably take the form of an “agreement with a small ‘a,’” that would not require ratification or U.S. Senate approval, said one Bush administration official (Maura Reynolds, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 20). Bush’s statement represents a policy change for the president, who until now has repeatedly said he would not submit to North Korean blackmail by offering incentives before Pyongyang verifiably ended all nuclear activity, the New York Times reported. Bush decided to modify his stance last weekend, however, and adopted a position, promoted by the State Department, to at least communicate to Pyongyang what it might receive if it retreats from its nuclear program, according to the Times. Despite the new U.S. position, officials cautioned that North Korea might still reject it, deciding that it has invested too much in its nuclear weapons program to stop it now. “There are a lot of people in the administration who think that the North is bound and determined to plow ahead with its nukes, no matter what,” said one senior U.S. official who opposes any meaningful negotiation with North Korea. The U.S. offer is nevertheless valuable, the official said, because a North Korean rejection would illustrate its true intentions. “We could demonstrate to the world that it’s time to take more decisive action, from cutting off their oil, to seizing their ships, to having unpleasant things happen to their suspected sites,” the official said (Sanger, New York Times).
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