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Bush, Koizumi Discuss North Korean Nuclear Program By Mike Nartker SAVANNAH, Ga. — U.S. President George W. Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi yesterday discussed efforts to resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, including the Japanese leader’s observations of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il during a meeting last month, according to a U.S. senior administration official (see GSN, June 8). The meeting came during a summit of the Group of Eight global economic powers being held this week in Sea Island, Ga. Bush and Koizumi met with “a lot of good cheer and friendly conversation,” the senior official said. Koizumi told Bush that during his May trip to Pyongyang, he saw a shift in Kim’s position toward a realization of the possible benefits, such as economic aid and energy assistance, that North Korea could gain by verifiably ending its nuclear efforts, the official said. Koizumi also told Bush yesterday that Kim told him that his country did not want to possess nuclear weapons, the senior administration official said. While North Korea has made similar statements in the past, according to the official, they were also followed by claims that North Korea needed to develop nuclear weapons in response to tensions with the United States. The White House views the next round of multilateral talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis, set to be held in Beijing by the end of the month, as an opportunity to determine if North Korea has shifted its position regarding its nuclear efforts, the senior administration official said. The six-party talks, involve China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the United States. Koizumi reaffirmed yesterday Japan’s support for the six-party talks as the means for resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis, the official said. Kim has expressed a desire to conduct a bilateral dialogue directly with the United States, a Japanese government spokesman said here yesterday, adding that Koizumi did not give Bush any “specific advice” during their meeting regarding such a proposal. While the Bush administration has rejected bilateral talks with Pyongyang, U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2004 presidential election, has expressed support for direct talks with North Korea. “This problem is too urgent to allow China, or others at the table, to speak for us,” Kerry said last week (see GSN, June 2). According to the senior administration official, the “main advice” Koizumi gave Bush yesterday was to keep open the possibility that Pyongyang could receive benefits, such as economic aid, energy assistance and security guarantees if it were to end its suspected nuclear weapons program. Bush agreed that such benefits may be possible, but only if North Korea were to verifiably end its nuclear program, the official said. Meanwhile, China said yesterday that the United States is using allegations that North Korea is developing a uranium-based nuclear weapons program in addition to its publicly disclosed plutonium-based effort to hold up nuclear talks, the New York Times reported. “We know nothing about the uranium program,” Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong said in Beijing. “We don’t know whether it exists. So far the U.S. has not presented convincing evidence of this program,” he added. Zhou said the United States should stop making charges about the uranium program unless it could offer more conclusive evidence of its existence. “This is a problem,” he said. U.S. officials have based their case for North Korea’s uranium program on evidence obtained from Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who acknowledged selling nuclear technology to Pyongyang. Zhou said that the burden to compromise in the next round of talks would fall more heavily on the United States. “The United States is accusing North Korea of having this or that, and then attaching conditions” to negotiations, Zhou said. “So it should really be the U.S. that takes the initiative,” he added. Zhou also suggested China was edging closer to North Korea on two other central disputes from the previous multilateral session, the Times said. He suggested it made little sense to insist that North Korea completely and unilaterally dismantle it nuclear program before the United States agreed to provide any benefits. He also suggested that China sympathized with North Korea’s desire to maintain a peaceful nuclear program.
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