By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — U.S. officials are drafting a step-by-step process for “normalizing” relations with North Korea, pending Pyongyang’s continued efforts to eliminate its nuclear weapons program, according to defense and diplomatic sources (see GSN, Nov. 19).
In exchange for disabling its nuclear weapons facilities, the Bush administration is preparing to remove North Korea from a State Department list of nations sponsoring terrorism, regional experts say. The White House is also getting set to lift economic sanctions. Down the road, a permanent peace agreement may be in the offing for the Korean Peninsula. For North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, such moves represent a huge “carrot” that might allow his impoverished nation valuable access to the international financial system. Additionally they offer a symbolic measure of respect that the erratic dictator craves, according to analysts. In February, the six nations engaging in talks — the United States, Russia, China, Japan and the two Koreas — issued a joint statement saying Pyongyang had agreed to shut down and eventually seal its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and allow back inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency for verification and monitoring. In addition, North Korea would list all its nuclear programs, which would also be abandoned. In exchange, the United States and Japan would commence bilateral talks with Pyongyang aimed at “moving toward full diplomatic relations,” according to the six-party statement. Washington would additionally start the process of removing North Korea’s designation as a state-sponsor of terrorism. The parties would provide economic, energy and humanitarian assistance to the North, starting with emergency energy supplies. Since the joint statement was issued, nuclear weapons experts have debated its risks and merits, and the issue has been picked up by U.S. presidential candidates in both parties (see GSN, Oct. 16). Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) is among those who have said the United States must embrace diplomacy to eliminate North Korean weapons. Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others have voiced skepticism that Pyongyang would honor a promise to permanently shutter its nuclear facilities and declare all its atomic materials and weapons. A viable pact would also likely demand a multifaceted political dimension that extends beyond the headline-making concessions, according to officials and observers. Political realignment“Most of us are too fixated on technical details about the six-party talks, and not enough on the political realignment that’s going to be essential if we are to achieve denuclearization,” Joel Wit, a former State Department specialist on Korea, said at a panel discussion last month. Wit coordinated the Clinton administration’s 1994 U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework, in which Pyongyang pledged to freeze its plutonium production program in exchange for fuel oil, economic cooperation, and the construction of two modern light-water nuclear power plants. The deal ultimately fell apart and, amid deteriorating relations, North Korea in October 2006 announced it had tested a nuclear weapon (see GSN, Oct. 16, 2006). Under the current diplomatic process, Pyongyang will seek an array of additional political steps that might seem unnecessary in Washington but mean a great deal to Kim’s regime, Wit said at the Oct. 23 event, sponsored by George Washington University. “Since 1991, North Korea has pursued steadily — and, at times, relentlessly — a long-term strategic relationship with the United States,” he said. “It’s a policy based purely on geopolitics. The North Koreans understand that they must buffer the heavy influence [their] larger neighbors have or could soon gain over them, since they are a smaller, weaker state.” North Korean leaders “believe that they could be useful to the United States in a longer and larger balance-of-power game with China,” said Wit, a scholar at Columbia University and visiting fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. For its part, China is perhaps most concerned about maintaining stability, according to Asia experts. That means Beijing will act to reduce the risk of a regional conflict that could spill across its borders. As Washington presses Pyongyang to make good on its vow to eliminate its nuclear weapons program, “that is where our greatest leverage rests — in our ability to convince North Korea of our commitment to co-exist with them,” Wit said. “That is why steps like taking North Korea off the terrorism list and dropping sanctions are important. “But in order to achieve denuclearization, we are going to have to be prepared to go even further,” Wit added. “We’re going to have to heavily season our effort to denuclearize North Korea with steps such as exchanges of visits of high-level officials and joint communiques, which mean a lot to the North Koreans — a lot more than they mean to us.” One such move might be to send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on a diplomatic visit to the fortress nation, which “would be of enormous importance to the North Koreans,” Wit said. “That’s the kind of thing we’re going to have to be prepared to do.” Rice is interested in holding six-party talks at the foreign minister level and in proposing a new format for dialogue, to include broader peace and security issues, a former Bush administration official said. This official and several others interviewed for this article spoke on condition of not being named, citing the sensitivity of pending policy decisions. “Significant” discussions between the Pentagon and State Department held over the past two months were expected to address the range of possibilities, according to a senior military officer with significant experience in the Pacific. The State Department would not officially acknowledge interagency planning for particular steps the United States might implement to thaw relations with North Korea. “There are lots of things that can happen if the right responses come from the other side, but might never happen if the right responses don’t come from the other side,” said one State Department official. However, “whatever internal deliberations we might have,” Foggy Bottom would not “lay it all out” for public dissemination, the official said. The former Bush administration official said the interagency discussions would likely draw upon a “laundry list” the State Department’s Korea desk has developed over the past decade, detailing the kinds of liaison officials that might be assigned to each nation and exchanges that could occur in an iterative process of normalization. In an October interview, one senior officer — Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright — said the United States would take a “crawl, walk, run” approach. There will be no “‘big-bang event’ … and now everything is normal,” he said. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded with a laugh that his metaphor might be ill-worded in the context of eliminating the North’s nuclear weapons. Questions lingerIn fact, some observers are concerned that Bush’s rush to normalize relations with North Korea prior to leaving office — with an eye toward making the pact part of his presidential legacy — might cement a less-than-desirable agreement. “It has that feel,” Randall Schriver, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said in an Oct. 17 telephone interview. One former Bush administration official noted in an interview that it might be relatively painless for Kim to shut down his aging reactor at Yongbyon, making that concession less significant than some might think. Even the practical effects of a promise to eliminate nuclear material are under debate. Christopher Hill, who heads the U.S. delegation to the six-party talks, said last month the North must relinquish the 50 kilograms of plutonium in its stockpile before it could achieve full benefits of the six-party agreement (see GSN, Oct. 16). However, no one outside North Korea knows exactly how much nuclear material Pyongyang has amassed or how many weapons it has built. Thus many observers worry there will be no reliable way to ensure that all of the material has been declared and ultimately destroyed. “It could be that they have none,” said Henry Sokolski, head of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, in an interview last month. “It could be that they have quite a lot. We don’t know.” That poses an enormous quandary to North Korea’s interlocutors. “You want to make sure you’ve got it all,” Sokolski said. “[But] how are you going to know?” Before year’s end, North Korea is expected to disclose how much weapon-grade plutonium it has, but Pyongyang has said it will not reveal where the material is stored (see GSN, Nov. 26). Work has already begun to disable the Yongbyon reactor (see GSN, Nov. 8). Any move Pyongyang might make to cheat on the nuclear dismantlement agreement would almost certainly discourage international investment, said one former Bush administration State Department official. “The international banking system may be less compliant [for North Korea] than the U.S. government,” this source said. As the process plays out, some critics also worry the State Department may prematurely absolve North Korea of liability for its offensive acts over the past several decades, including abduction of Japanese and South Korean citizens. Another concern is that Pyongyang may have helped Syria develop a nuclear capability, which — if true — could suggest “they’re still playing games and shouldn’t be trusted,” said one former Bush administration official (see GSN, Oct. 26). “I think the North Koreans have played a weak hand pretty well,” said Schriver, now with the consulting firm Armitage International. Some Korea-watchers, though, have expressed doubt that the initial steps would culminate anytime soon in normalized relations. An incremental process“It’s difficult to imagine for me despite all the speculation … that we are ready to sign a peace treaty with the North Koreans, or that we are ready at this point to normalize relations with North Korea,” said Victor Cha, until recently the U.S. deputy head of delegation to the six-party talks and now a professor at Georgetown University. “I think the idea when we put together the joint statement was that certainly these processes could start,” he said, appearing at last month’s panel discussion alongside Wit. “And at some point — at the appropriate time — the appropriate parties will look at the idea of trying to achieve a permanent peace agreement on the Korean Peninsula.” However, Cha said, “it’s difficult for me to imagine them finishing either of these unless we are truly at the point of no return,” where North Korea’s compliance in eliminating its weapons is assured. “If you agree to conclude these processes before you have reached the point of no return, then essentially there is no reason for the North Koreans” to follow through with full denuclearization, he said. “It is not in any of our interests … that the United States normalize relations with a nuclear North Korea or sign a peace treaty with a nuclear North Korea. That is not in anybody’s interests in the region.” Cha said the allure of legacy for the Bush administration would not prompt the White House to rush the process. “I don’t think we’re in a situation that all of a sudden, the Bush administration has become wide-eyed optimists on North Korea,” Cha said. “That’s far from the case.” Rather, Hill’s negotiating team at the six-party talks would take a cautious and incremental approach, he forecasted. “If you test [the North Koreans] and they respond in ways that are cooperative, then you push them … harder,” Cha said. “You see how much faster you can get them to move, and be willing to move the process forward. And if they don’t respond, then in this process of trying to test their intentions, you are [simultaneously] building a coalition for whatever action needs to be taken next.” The senior military officer with Pacific experience called the next 14 months of the Bush administration “a window of extraordinary opportunity” in which Pyongyang’s intentions could be probed. If significant progress on eliminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is delayed until the next administration, valuable continuity would be lost, this official said. From their own perspective, North Korean leaders are eager to conclude a deal with Bush on the premise that a conservative U.S. president would have the best chance of making it stick, according to analysts. Challenges aheadHowever, even a dramatic step like taking North Korea off the state-sponsored terrorism list would not, in itself, yield the kind of economic windfall Kim might imagine, said the former State Department official. To attract international investment, Pyongyang would have to follow up with significant moves to end North Korean counterfeiting and money-laundering, increase transparency, and eliminate the army’s dominant role in foreign policy, this source opined. “They have to get over the fact that there’s no easy, one-button fix to their problems,” the former official said this week. With huge cultural shifts still barely on the horizon, Kim’s regime may not yet fully comprehend the extent of change potentially required in order to achieve normalization, this source said. “I don’t know that the North Koreans understand the opportunity they have to be a more normal player in the international financial system and really transform themselves,” said the former official. One mammoth shift would be to renounce its longtime “army-first” policy, which directs state resources to the military ahead of all others, several former diplomats noted. “If the key to North Korean politics is a military-first policy, how can you give up the weapon [central to that strength]?” asked James Kelly, who preceded Hill as the State Department’s top Korea negotiator and is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Pacific Forum. Taking North Korea off the terrorism blacklist also carries political perils for the United States, including a potentially serious blow to relations with Japan, according to some experts. In a White House meeting with Bush Nov. 16, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukada insisted that Pyongyang continue to be regarded as a terrorist nation until it accounts for Japanese citizens it has abducted. “It appears their interests weren’t being accounted for and there’s some feeling in Tokyo the abduction issue hasn’t been dealt with,” Schriver said prior to the White House visit. North Korean operatives are believed to have kidnapped at least 13 — and possibly as many as 80 — Japanese individuals and nearly 500 South Koreans, mostly during the 1970s. Kim confirmed in 2002 that he dispatched secret agents to kidnap ordinary citizens from Japanese towns to serve as cultural and language instructors for Korean spies, but he has never accounted for the suspected extent of the program. “I understand, Mr. Prime Minister, how important the issue is to the Japanese people, and we will not forget the Japanese abductees, nor their families,” Bush declared after the recent meeting. For his part, Fukuda said the two had discussed “North Korea and the fight against terrorism” and repeated his U.S. counterpart’s pledge to “never forget the abduction issue.” “This is a negotiation where everybody and everything must be dealt with for this to work,” Selig Harrison, who directs the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, said in an interview.
The top U.S. nuclear negotiator involved in a six-party North Korean nuclear disablement agreement plans to leave for North Korea Monday to examine progress in disabling the country’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Nov. 27). Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill would travel to Pyongyang after making brief visits to Japan and South Korea to discuss their oversight of the disablement effort, a high-level U.S. State Department official said yesterday. North Korea invited Hill for his second visit this year as a deadline approaches at the end of this year for North Korea to declare all of its nuclear assets (Anne Gearan, Associated Press I/International Herald Tribune, Nov. 28) Hill confirmed the planned trip to North Korea upon arriving in Japan today, AP reported “We are making progress, and clearly we have more to do but I think we are on schedule,” he told reporters. Hill said he plans to speak with Japanese officials today before traveling to South Korea tomorrow. He then plans to visit North Korea from Monday until around Wednesday next week, he said (Associated Press II/International Herald Tribune, Nov. 28).
Iran said yesterday that it would not discuss halting its uranium enrichment program in a meeting scheduled for Friday between top Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 27). “Suspension (of uranium enrichment) is a step backward and is not on the agenda of the talks,” government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham said in a weekly briefing for reporters. Solana is expected to report to the U.N. Security Council by the end of the month on progress in talks to suspend Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts, which could yield material for a nuclear bomb. Iran maintains that its nuclear program is intended only for power production, but has turned down offers by Solana of political and economic incentives in exchange for suspending its enrichment work (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Nov. 27). Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called today for the publication of details on classified information that Tehran officials accused former Iranian nuclear negotiator Hossein Moussavian of providing to Western powers. Moussavian was exonerated Monday from government charges of engaging in espionage and holding classified information after the accusations provoked a storm of controversy among Ahmadinejad’s domestic rivals. “The full content of the negotiation of this ex-member of the nuclear negotiating team should be published,” Iranian state media quoted Ahmadinejad as saying following a cabinet meeting. “It is very appropriate that the intelligence content he has given to the Westerners should be published, so others are informed of it,” he said (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Nov. 28).
Israel’s intelligence agency ran a secret campaign in the early 1980s to assassinate people who assisted the efforts of then-top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to build a nuclear weapon for Pakistan, according to new book (see GSN, Sept. 27). In their book Deception, investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark discuss a letter bombing in West Germany outside the home of Khan associate Heinz Mebus, who was said to have assisted Pakistan in its construction of fluoride and uranium conversion plants in 1979. The book says that European law enforcement officials linked the unsuccessful attack to a February 1981 bombing outside the Berne, Switzerland home of Eduard German, the managing director of an engineering firm credited with supplying gasification and purification equipment to Pakistan in 1979. A third bomb also exploded in West Germany outside the headquarters of a company that had provided nuclear technology to Pakistan since 1976. While Swiss police never tracked down the bombers or linked the attacks directly to Israeli intelligence officials, they found references to untraceable organizations such as the Committee to Safeguard the Islamic Revolution and the Group for Nonproliferation in South Asia, the authors said (Amit Baruah, Hindustan Times/Yahoo!News, Nov. 27)
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