China Assisted U.S. Efforts on N. Korea, Officials Say : Asia: Beijing reportedly recommended freezing of nuclear program--after Clinton renewed its trade status.

China played an important, behind-the-scenes role in persuading North Korea to freeze its nuclear program and has since informed the United States of its efforts, Clinton Administration officials and Washington-based diplomats say.

Just days before former President Jimmy Carter visited Pyongyang, China’s Foreign Ministry in Beijing called in North Korea’s ambassador to warn that his government could not depend indefinitely on Chinese support in its confrontation with the United States over its nuclear program.

The message China delivered was that it would be in Pyongyang’s self-interest, for economic development and for its desire to reunify Korea, to cooperate more with international efforts to inspect its nuclear facilities, U.S. officials said. This warning is said to have been reinforced by a similar Chinese message to North Korea’s ambassador at the United Nations.

“I’ve had Chinese officials tell me they did that, and we’ve had other signals too that the Chinese were growing more and more frustrated with the North Koreans,” a senior U.S. official said in an account confirmed by others in the Clinton Administration. “These recent moves by China . . . were quite significant in terms of affecting North Korea’s thinking.”

Beijing’s efforts to influence North Korea were timed in a way that seemed to be aimed at rewarding the Administration for changes in its China policy. They came within weeks of President Clinton’s announcement, on May 29, that he would extend China’s trading privileges in the United States without imposing any conditions for improvements in human rights.

Neither China nor the United States has claimed there was any connection between Administration help for Beijing on most-favored-nation trade benefits, on the one hand, and Chinese support for America with North Korea, on the other. But there have been suggestions of an informal, unstated link between the two issues.

“We had really, painstakingly worked with the Chinese,” another Administration official said this week. “And after the MFN decision, the trend was ever clearer that the Chinese were getting fed up (with North Korea).”

By informing the Administration of its message to North Korea, China apparently was seeking to demonstrate to the White House the benefits of avoiding further friction between Washington and Beijing. Over the last few weeks, Chinese officials have been trying to convince the Administration not to go too far in upgrading the level of U.S. contact with Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.

Before China delivered its message to North Korean diplomats, the Pyongyang regime had been threatening to withdraw from the International Atomic Energy Agency and to expel its inspectors. “That recent dust-up over the inspectors was the proverbial last straw for China,” one Administration official said.

The impact of China’s message to Pyongyang is unknown. But within a short time, North Korean President Kim Il Sung, during Carter’s trip, offered to freeze the nuclear program and to let international inspectors remain in North Korea.

Those developments have paved the way for a summit between North and South Korea, announced Tuesday and set for July 25-27 in Pyonyang. The meeting between the Korean presidents would be the first since the peninsula was divided at the end of World War II.

China’s willingness to weigh in with North Korea represents a significant change. Over the last year, Chinese officials have told the United States that they have little or no influence over North Korea. They also have contended that the United States and its allies are exaggerating the threat posed by the North Korean nuclear program and that there was no hard evidence that North Korea had developed nuclear weapons.

In March, when the Administration tried to win approval for a U.N. resolution condemning North Korea, China opposed the effort and succeeded in having the proposed resolution watered down to a “statement” that carried less weight.

China continues to oppose sanctions against Pyongyang. But over the last few weeks, Western diplomats say, China has become more cooperative.

In changing their approach, Chinese officials are believed to have concluded that it is not in China’s interest for North Korea to use its nuclear program to intimidate other Asian countries.

China also does not want a war on its borders; the North Korean crisis was beginning to take on military overtones. The Administration had started moves to bolster U.S. forces in South Korea, and North Korea had warned that the imposition of U.N. sanctions, which the United States sought, would be considered an act of war.

Administration officials said the first signs of a possible change in policy by China came in June, when a pro-Beijing newspaper in Hong Kong, Ta Kung Pao, suggested that the Chinese government might restrict shipments of oil or even food to North Korea.

A few days later, a delegation of North Korean military officials visited Beijing for talks with leaders of China’s People’s Liberation Army and Chinese President Jiang Zemin. In public, Chinese officials reaffirmed their old, close relationship with North Korea. Using language dating to the Korean War era, they said ties between Beijing and Pyongyang were as close as “lips and teeth.”

But U.S. experts on Korea believe that--although Chinese officials embraced the North Korean military delegation in public--privately they may have registered unhappiness with Pyongyang’s nuclear policies.

Soon after Carter returned with a promise from Kim to freeze his nuclear program, the Administration obtained detailed assurances of that pledge from Pyongyang. Clinton then announced that the United States would enter into a new round of talks with North Korea in Geneva beginning July 8.