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Bush Favors Diplomatic Options for North Korea
U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that diplomatic options to address North Korea’s nuclear drive remain viable, Reuters reported (see GSN, May 31). “It’s either diplomacy or military. And I am for the diplomacy approach,” Bush said. “And so for those who say that we ought to be using our military to solve the problem, I would say that while all options are on the table, we’ve got a ways to go to solve this diplomatically,” he said. “It’s a matter of continuing to send a message to Mr. Kim Jong Il that if you want to be accepted by the neighborhood and be a part of those who are viewed with respect in the world, work with us to get rid of your nuclear weapons program,” Bush said (Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters, June 1). South Korea praised Bush’s statement. “It is significant that President Bush has confirmed his commitment to resolving the nuclear issue peacefully, through diplomatic means,” said Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Ban Ki-moon (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, June 1). Kwon Jin-ho, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun’s national security adviser, is scheduled today to meet his U.S. counterpart, Stephen Hadley, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington ahead of a June 10 summit between Roh and Bush, the Financial Times reported. “Whether North Korea returns to the negotiating table or not depends on the U.S. attitude. Pyongyang’s biggest concern is a U.S. security guarantee of its regime. But Washington’s stance on that is not clear,” said Koh Yoo-hwan, a professor at Dongkuk University in Seoul. Koh added that Roh is likely to ask Bush to make a more specific offer to North Korea (Song Jung-a, Financial Times, June 1). Many experts believe North Korea has one or two atomic bombs, but they are probably too large for Pyongyang to deliver them by ballistic missiles, AFP reported today. “North Korea might have developed one or two … nuclear bombs, but if it did, it may not have the technology to launch them on a missile,” says a recent South Korean National Intelligence Service report. “We believe North Korea has not acquired enough technology to miniaturize nuclear bombs which must weigh less than 500 kilograms to be mounted on a missile,” the report adds. However, former top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has admitted to assisting North Korea in its nuclear program, and that cooperation reportedly included provision of warhead designs to Pyongyang, AFP reported. Khan also claimed to have seen a North Korean missile carrying a nuclear warhead. “That is not impossible,” said Kang Jungmin, a South Korean nuclear analyst, adding that leading experts believe Pyongyang may have developed crude atomic bombs similar to those dropped on Japan by the United States during World War II. Other experts believe North Korea has weaponized its missiles. “The argument that they don’t have a missile delivery system is spurious, according to most experts,” said Nicholas Reader, an analyst with the International Crisis group (Charles Whelan, Agence France-Presse/News24.com, June 1).
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