U.S. officials denied reports yesterday that President George W. Bush has resigned himself to the inevitability of a nuclear-armed North Korea, as reports emerged that some backchannel negotiations with North Korea are underway (see GSN, March 5).

“The position of the United States, along with our allies in the region, is just the opposite, that it is important to make certain that there is a denuclearized Korean Peninsula,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday.

Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers and experts attacked the White House for not taking a more active role in dealing with Pyongyang.

“The White House continues to sit back and watch, playing down the threat and apparently playing for time, but time is not on our side,” said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo.com, March. 6).

Several former Clinton administration officials said the White House must become more active in the situation.

“We cannot wait this out,” said former Defense Secretary William Perry.  “In a few months, the North Koreans will have five or six nuclear bombs.  That fundamentally changes the situation,” he added.

On Capitol Hill, Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) said the White House must turn its attention toward Pyongyang.

“I am increasingly alarmed that this administration’s military and diplomatic fixation on waging war with Iraq is serving to overshadow and possibly eclipse the mounting crisis in North Korea,” Byrd said (Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, March 6).

Fleischer said the White House remains firm in its determination not to hold direct talks with North Korea until Pyongyang abandons its nuclear aspirations.

The White House has focused on the “importance of working together in a multilateral fashion with China and Russia and Japan and South Korea.  After all, they have a stake in this too,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo.com).

Backchannels Open

Nuclear experts from North Korea and the United States, however, did meet Feb. 13 in Berlin to discuss the nuclear crisis, according to the Financial Times.

Joel Wit, a senior fellow from the Center for Strategic and International Studies and another U.S. expert met with North Korean officials, according to the newspaper.  The North Koreans reportedly asked for details on what kind of inspections the United States was seeking to verify that Pyongyang dismantled its nuclear program (Financial Times/BBC Monitoring, March 6).

In addition, Ra Jong-yil, a senior South Korean security adviser, met with a top North Korean official in Beijing last month, Seoul revealed today.

“What is confirmed is that Senior Adviser Ra met with someone from the North.  However, the contact was nothing official and it didn’t have any agenda,” said presidential spokeswoman Song Kyoung-hee.

The meeting was intended to open “a dialogue channel,” she said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo.com).

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