Rice reproaches U.S. envoy

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reproached a presidential envoy Tuesday for predicting that North Korea would not bow to pressure from the United States and its allies to disclose full details of its nuclear program.

In an unusually sharp tone, Rice said that Jay Lefkowitz, Bush’s special envoy to North Korea on human rights, was not speaking for the administration Thursday when he predicted that Pyongyang would hold on to its nuclear weapons. In talks involving six countries, U.S. and allied officials are trying to convince the regime to relinquish its weapons program.

“He’s the human rights envoy,” Rice told reporters. “That’s what he knows. That’s what he does. He doesn’t work on the six-party talks. He doesn’t know what’s going on in the six-party talks and he certainly has no say in the six-party talks.”

Lefkowitz, a conservative former White House lawyer, told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute that the North Korean government’s nuclear program would be unchanged when the next president takes office in a year. “We should consider a new approach to North Korea,” he said.

Lefkowitz, who was appointed by Bush in 2005 in compliance with a human rights law passed the year before, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

His remarks before the conservative think tank touched a nerve within the administration.

U.S. officials, led by Rice and Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, have been working with other countries to persuade Pyongyang to gradually disable and dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for aid and diplomatic benefits.

But conservatives in the Bush administration have been skeptical that North Korean officials would give up weapons that they believe help guarantee their survival and provide bargaining leverage.

Debate about how long the U.S. should remain patient intensified within the administration after North Korea missed a Dec. 31 deadline to formally declare its nuclear assets, U.S. officials said.

For the moment, Rice and Hill have the upper hand in the policy feud, but the administration will come under pressure to shift course if North Korea continues to hold out.

Lefkowitz is not alone in his prediction. Other former U.S. officials, including specialists on nuclear arms issues, doubt that Pyongyang can be persuaded. John R. Bolton, the administration’s former ambassador to the United Nations, denounced the North Korea policy as a charade.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang contends that U.S. officials have not fulfilled promises to provide aid and to take North Korea off the U.S. list of countries that support terrorism.

Lefkowitz, a litigator frequently described as a neoconservative, was a top Bush aide on domestic policy and drafted the administration’s 2001 approach barring the use of federal funds for stem cell research on embryos. He returned to the Kirkland & Ellis law firm in 2003. In his current role, which is a part-time job, he reports to Rice.

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paul.richter@latimes.com