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Bush Pushes for New North Korea Nuclear Negotiations
U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to push for a new round of negotiations over the fate of North Korea’s nuclear program during talks this weekend at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Chile, a senior State Department official said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 17). Bush is set to meet on the sidelines of the session with leaders from Japan, China, Russia and South Korea — four of the other participants at the six-party talks, Agence France-Presse reported. “I think we are going through an intense process,” the U.S. official said. “I think the president’s meetings with the leaders on this can be quite significant in stating his own commitment to the six-party process and how important he thinks it is,” he said. Ministers of the 21-member APEC forum adopted a joint statement asserting the need to rein in nuclear proliferation by North Korea and Iran, according to AFP. There was “a general agreement that all of us in the region had to put increasing pressure on the North Koreans to participate in the six-party talks,” Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Nov. 19). North Korea was expected to be an agenda item at a foreign ministers’ dinner hosted by Downer at the summit, according to The Australian. North Korean leaders “need to understand there will be a price to pay if they disband the six-party process,” Downer said (Dennis Shanahan, The Australian, Nov. 19). U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing yesterday, also stepped up attempts to have other six-party states pressure North Korea to return to the talks, the New York Times reported. A senior administration official, speaking after the Powell-Li meeting, said recent indications from South Korea and others had been “mildly encouraging” that North Korea remained committed to the dialogue. The official added that he hoped that working-level talks at least could be arranged before the end of the year (Steven Weisman, New York Times, Nov. 19). Some experts said that a resolution on the North Korean nuclear standoff could depend on how the dispute over Iran’s nuclear work is resolved, the Baltimore Sun reported (see related GSN story, today). “The North Koreans are closely watching Iran’s nuclear negotiations,” said Zhang Liangui, a Korea expert at the Central Party School in Beijing. “If Iran gives up their nuclear program under pressure from the United States, North Korea will also rethink its policy. If Iran’s situation sinks into a deadlock, North Korea would probably stay in its deadlock situation as well.” (Gady Epstein, Baltimore Sun, Nov. 19). Elsewhere, a top U.S. military commander said yesterday that a financially desperate North Korea could resort to selling weapon-grade plutonium, harvested from spent fuel rods, to terrorists, the Associated Press reported. “From the military standpoint, they do have a capability that we must address,” said Gen. Leon LaPorte, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea. “And there is concern that North Korea, in its desire for hard currency, would sell weapons-grade plutonium to some terrorist organizations,” he said. “That would be disastrous to the world.” (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Nov. 18).
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