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Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Rice urges teamwork on North Korea
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former President Jimmy Carter had it pegged right. The call’s not coming.
“I don’t think we really need outsiders” who volunteer to negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to end its nuclear weapons program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview Monday. “We talk to people who talk to the North Koreans all the time from the outside, and those are valuable voices. But look at where we are.
“The North Koreans have tested,” Rice said, “but we have a coalition of states that has been working on this problem now for a couple of years so that you have China, probably the most influential country with North Korea, signed on to the [U.N. enforcement] sanctions against North Korea that I think give some prospects that the North Koreans may feel enough pressure that they come back in seriousness to the six-party talks.”
During a panel discussion at the Carter Center this month, the former president suggested his availability to again negotiate with the North Koreans, as he did in 1994. During those discussions, undertaken at the invitation of Kim Il-sung, the North Korean leader agreed to freeze plutonium-producing reactor efforts in return for an easing of sanctions, fuel oil and a light-water nuclear reactor for domestic energy use — an agreement he promptly began to violate.
After his son, the current leader, withdrew from six-party talks and tested a nuclear weapon three weeks ago, the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions that prohibit delivery of luxury goods, war materiel, spare parts for weapons systems and anything that could enhance North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Carter and others argue the United States should agree to North Korea’s insistence on direct talks. “I think as far as North Korea is concerned, they would be willing [to negotiate],” Carter said, “But I don’t think there is a chance in the world that the U.S. government would approve I, or someone else, to go negotiate with North Korea.”
Said Rice Monday: “The reason we don’t have bilateral negotiations is that we have been down that road. The ‘94 agreement, which was worth a try at the time I think, was then violated by the North Koreans. And they had no penalty to pay, vis-a-vis anybody except the United States because nobody else was party to that agreement. So this time, if we actually get an agreement … the parties to it will be China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the United States. That is a very much more powerful position.”
She continued: “But I really would like to debunk one myth: the idea that we don’t talk to the North Koreans, even bilaterally, within the context of six-party negotiations.
“Back in 2005, the Chinese said to us that the North Koreans wanted to talk to Chris Hill [assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs]. Would we do this in Beijing in order to get the six-party talks restarted? And Chris Hill had that dinner in Beijing, he and his North Korean counterpart. And then about six weeks later, the six-party talks began again.
“So it’s not that we have not talked to the North Koreans,” Rice continued. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we talked to them very often,” as the United States does one-on-one with the four other nations participating in the talks to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. “What we don’t want to do is get ourselves into a negotiation with the North Koreans where it is the United States and North Korea agreeing to something that the other states who have real leverage have no stake in. That’s different than saying ‘Should we talk to the North Koreans?’ We do and we should.”
Rice, for the record, did not introduce Carter’s name. The question was whether there was “a chance in the world” that Carter or some other outsider would be asked to perform any role in talking or negotiating with the North Koreans.
Clearly, as Rice asserted, the most promising approach to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is six-party talks based on U.N. sanctions. No country in the region, including China, wants North Korea to have nuclear weapons.
China is the key. The combination of a neighbor, friendly but unpredictable, with nuclear weapons destabilizes the region, a distraction for a nation intent on becoming a world economic powerhouse.
North Korea’s nuclear program is not solely an American problem. It’s the world’s — and it’s up to the world to solve it.
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