U.S. Weighing Deal to End A-Arms in Korea

The Bush Administration is considering removing U.S. nuclear warheads from South Korea as part of a concerted effort to get North Korea to halt the continuing development of its own nuclear weapons program, Administration officials say.

A withdrawal of American nuclear weapons from South Korea would alter a longstanding and sacrosanct element in American security policy in Asia. The United States is generally believed to have kept such warheads in South Korea since the Korean War, although U.S. policy is neither to confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons there.

Over the last few months, several retired U.S. officials and other foreign policy and military specialists outside the Administration have begun to argue that South Korea’s security no longer depends on the presence of American nuclear weapons in the country.

Administration officials have said that the advancing North Korean nuclear weapons program is the most serious security problem the United States now confronts in Asia. The Administration fears that if North Korea gets close to acquiring nuclear warheads, both South Korea and Japan would feel compelled to begin their own nuclear weapons programs.

In a series of interviews, Bush Administration officials acknowledged that proposals for some sort of reduction or phase-out of U.S. warheads are being studied in an active, broad-based re-examination of American policy toward the Koreas.

“I think it’s fair to say that we want to look at the options that have been outlined” for some sort of reduction or phase-out, one senior Administration official said last week. “I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.”

But he added that “there’s an enormously ensnared, entangled problem there, one where we have an enormous responsibility to move with caution.”

“The whole issue of the nuclear weapons in North Korea requires us to sort of go back to square one and think about all of the political and economic and military considerations at stake and review everything,” a senior Defense Department official told The Times.

He said that the United States is actively discussing nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula, not only with the South Korean government, but also with Japan, China and the Soviet Union.

On Saturday, South Korean officials said that North Korea has promised to sign an accord allowing international inspections of its nuclear facilities, according to news agency reports from Seoul. The reports said that North Korean Ambassador Jin Chung Guk visited the Austrian headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday and conveyed his government’s plans to sign the agreement.

The signing of such an agreement, however, would not be enough to allay U.S. concerns about Pyongyang’s intentions in the field of nuclear weapons.

Any Administration effort to change its nuclear deployments in South Korea could touch off some controversy in Washington and in Seoul. Hong-Choo Hyun, South Korea’s ambassador to the United States, said that his government would oppose any removal of U.S. nuclear weapons if it amounts to a quid pro quo for a halt to North Korea’s nuclear weapons development.

North Korea has built a complex of nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang. This complex is said to include at least two nuclear reactors, along with a reprocessing plant to separate plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons, from spent uranium fuel.

Nuclear specialist Leonard S. Spector of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says that a third reactor is now under construction at Yongbyon.

North Korea officially denies that this complex is being used to develop nuclear weapons. But it has so far repeatedly delayed allowing the IAEA to inspect the Yongbyon complex.

“There’s no question that the North Koreans have in mind a nuclear weapons program,” said a senior Defense Department official. “They can say anything they want. But as far as I’m concerned, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, there’s a pretty good case for it being a duck. . . . There’s still some question as to what the timing of all this is. My own sense is that it will be several years before this turns from intention into (nuclear) capability. But that’s not a lot of time.”

For several years, North Korea has responded to complaints about its nuclear program by calling for the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from South Korea and for the creation of a nuclear-free zone on the Korean Peninsula.

More recently, North Korea has also asked for some sort of legal guarantee that the United States would not use nuclear weapons, even from outside the region, against North Korea.

Early this year, a study group including Gen. John W. Vessey, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former Assistant Secretary of State Gaston Sigur recommended withdrawing nuclear weapons from South Korea.

And Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., another former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, suggested recently that the United States might remove nuclear warheads after obtaining guarantees that North Korea will not acquire nuclear weapons.

These American proposals to withdraw nuclear weapons from South Korea would go only part way toward meeting the North Korean requests. Generally, American specialists call for withdrawing nuclear warheads from South Korean soil but preserving the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” over South Korea--that is, retaining the option of using nuclear weapons based elsewhere to protect South Korea if it is under attack.

“The actual presence of any nuclear weapons in South Korea is not necessary to maintain a nuclear umbrella over (South Korea),” asserted Crowe and Alan D. Romberg of the Council on Foreign Relations in a recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Other experts said that the Persian Gulf War has shown that the United States could remove nuclear warheads from South Korea and still provide nuclear protection to the country through ships offshore.

“The ability of the United States to project conventional forces effectively, as demonstrated in the Gulf War, coupled with the availability of nuclear-capable sea-based systems, should provide the necessary reassurances to Seoul,” Spector and Jacqueline R. Smith of the Carnegie Endowment wrote in another study of Korean nuclear issues.

Hyun, the South Korean ambassador to Washington, rejects these arguments. “I don’t know what they mean, Adm. Crowe and the others,” he said in an interview. “Imagine yourself as a North Korean military leader, or as the ‘Great Leader’ (North Korean President Kim Il Sung) himself. Just knowing those nuclear arms are there (in South Korea) is in itself a great deterrent.”

The South Korean government also argues that any withdrawal of U.S. warheads from South Korea would be wrong, because it would amount to rewarding North Korea for its development of a nuclear weapons program and for refusing so far to honor its legal obligation to allow international inspections at the nuclear complex.

“However we sugarcoat it, if we do something in relation to these North Korean demands, it would amount to rewarding North Korea for their own unreasonableness,” said Hyun. “If we allow this, we can expect that many other unreasonable demands may follow.”

Because of these problems, some experts said that they favor avoiding the appearance of any direct linkage between a removal of U.S. nuclear warheads from South Korea and a halt in North Korea’s nuclear program. Instead, they suggested, the United States and North Korea could each change course on its own, as if each were acting independently of the other.

“There could be a non-deal deal,” said Romberg. “As a matter of simple reality, in getting something done that is in the U.S. interest, I would opt for a solution of non-linkage linkage.”

U.S. officials said that another obstacle to be overcome is the official U.S. policy of not saying where--or if--nuclear weapons are deployed. The United States cannot announce that it is removing nuclear warheads from South Korea, because it has never officially acknowledged that they are there.

“Our policy is neither to confirm nor deny and that’s never going to change,” one State Department official said. However, he added, “this issue could be finessed. The South Koreans could say anything they want.”

The study in which Gen. Vessey and Sigur participated, carried out by the Committee on U.S.-Republic of Korea Relations, suggested that the South Korean government might simply announce “that there are no nuclear weapons stored on its soil.”

One U.S. official suggested that a change in policy on nuclear weapons in South Korea might even be announced when President Roh Tae Woo makes a scheduled visit to Washington next month. But others said that any change would take more time to work out. “This is a very tedious process of moving extremely carefully,” said a senior Administration official.

While North Korea was reported Saturday to be ready to agree to international inspection of its nuclear facilities, one Pentagon official says that merely obtaining international inspections of the Yongbyon complex will not be enough to ease U.S. fears about North Korean nuclear weapons.

“They (international inspections and safeguards) are important in their own right, but they do not necessarily mean that there won’t be a nuclear weapons program,” this Defense Department official said.

The United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea. However, since 1989, U.S. and North Korean officials have conducted 16 rounds of talks in Beijing.