Clinton Remains Skeptical of North Korea’s Pledges : Diplomacy: President says U.S. to focus on actions, not vows made to Carter. Administration still seeks sanctions.

President Clinton expressed skepticism Monday about North Korea’s intention to follow through on pledges made to former President Jimmy Carter to freeze its nuclear program and to move toward political reconciliation with South Korea.

Clinton, further distancing the Administration from Carter’s unofficial diplomatic mission to Pyongyang, said the United States will judge North Korea by its actions, not its words.

White House officials said the Administration will continue to seek economic sanctions against North Korea as punishment for its thwarting of international nuclear inspections, and U.S. officials met with Russian representatives at the United Nations to discuss a sanctions resolution.

Clinton said the Carter trip had yielded some “hopeful signs,” but he cautioned that it remains to be seen whether Pyongyang will halt its atomic program while the United States negotiates a resolution to the impasse over international inspection of its nuclear facilities.

Carter said over the weekend that North Korea’s 82-year-old dictator, Kim Il Sung, had vowed--while talks with Washington are under way--to halt all nuclear fuel loading and reprocessing at a reactor suspected of producing material for nuclear weapons.

Clinton said Monday that he is not yet convinced Kim is serious.

“We have surely something to gain by talking with the North Koreans, by avoiding further steps toward a crisis, but we have to know there’s been a change,” Clinton said in an interview on the NBC-TV program “Today.” “So we’ll be looking to verify that. . . . The critical question is, are they willing to freeze this nuclear program while we try to work these differences out?”

Clinton’s statement was carefully worded to distance him from Carter’s optimistic reading of his meetings with Kim. Clinton’s remarks left doubt about whether the Administration either supports the former President or believes he understood what Kim said and reported it accurately. Clinton’s statement also suggested that Carter may have exceeded his authority by appearing to negotiate with the North Korean leader rather than merely presenting Administration policy to him.

Carter “called me, and we agreed that the trip might be productive,” Clinton said. “He would go, he would listen, he would faithfully state the views of our Administration and reaffirm that our interest is in seeing that North Korea honor its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its commitment to a non-nuclear Korean peninsula.”

Clinton noted that Carter told him Kim had made such commitments to him. “Now we have to verify that,” Clinton said.

Carter, directly contradicting Administration policy, said last week that sanctions against North Korea would be counterproductive and should be dropped. He said his mission had ended the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear program.

But as a signal of its resolve not to be swayed by Carter’s report of a new, conciliatory attitude in North Korea, the Administration conducted unscheduled discussions with a senior Russian diplomat Monday at the United Nations on the subject of sanctions.

Madeleine Albright, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, discussed a draft sanctions resolution with Russian envoy Yuli Vorontsov; officials described that talk as a prelude to today’s meeting in Brussels between Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev.

Despite the U.N. talks, there were signs that Carter’s trip has slowed, at least for now, the momentum toward sanctions. A Japanese official said the allies should look on “positive aspects” of Carter’s mission, which the former President described as a breakthrough in the yearlong deadlock over North Korea’s suspected nuclear weapons development.

Washington needs Japan’s participation for sanctions to be effective because of Tokyo’s longstanding trade ties with Pyongyang, but Japan has been reluctant to embrace Clinton’s drive for an economic embargo and appears to be seizing on the Carter initiative as justifying its go-slow position.

But Administration officials continued to insist that the sanctions option is alive. “I think we’re moving forward in the U.N. now,” said White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers.

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