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Former U.S. Envoy Calls for Direct Talks With North Korea By David McGlinchey U.S. President George W. Bush has insisted that the United States will only meet North Korea in multilateral negotiations. Last month’s Beijing talks included the United States, North Korea, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan, but produced no substantive results. Days before the Aug. 27 meeting began, Jack Pritchard resigned as the U.S. special envoy for negotiations with North Korea. He had recently been criticized by conservative lawmakers for not delivering a hawkish message in his dealing with Pyongyang. At a Brookings Institution panel discussion today, Pritchard said the attempt to resolve the Korean nuclear crisis with multilateral talks alone “is ludicrous, it cannot happen.” “The prospect for success, unless the format is altered, is grim,” he said. Pritchard said that before the six nations come together to put their stamp on a diplomatic solution, contentious issues must be addressed in direct negotiations. “Does that mean that we will resolve the problem bilaterally? No … but we will lay the groundwork,” he said. Pritchard referred to the current negotiations as “drive-by meetings.” He also called for the Bush administration to appoint a full-time envoy to handle negotiations and coordinate diplomacy with regional allies. At the same panel discussion, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke said the nuclear crisis is unlikely to deteriorate into an armed conflict, even though negotiations are not progressing smoothly. “The chances of a war on the Korean Peninsula are minimal to nil,” Holbrooke said. He said that North Korea understands it would most likely be defeated if it launched an attack into South Korea. The U.S. military, meanwhile, is too heavily committed in Iraq to support an attack against Pyongyang, according to Holbrooke.
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