Bush Urged to Delay N. Korea Nuclear Power Deal Pending Review

The chairman of the House International Relations Committee and the panel’s ranking Democrat urged President Bush on Friday to shelve a controversial nuclear power deal with North Korea until the administration conducts a thorough review of the policy.

In a letter to the president, the lawmakers warned Bush that U.S. allies--South Korea in particular--will ask him to push ahead with the agreement. The accord, hammered out in 1994 by the Clinton administration, provides North Korea with modern reactors in exchange for the Communist regime’s pledge to end its nuclear weapons program.

“We urge you to avoid making any commitments to foreign governments that would prejudice your ability to refine U.S. policy toward North Korea,” said the letter, signed by committee chairman Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), ranking minority member Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), chairman of the Republican Policy Committee.

The letter was sent in advance of a visit to Washington next week by South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, an advocate of improved relations between North Korea and the West. Kim has said he hopes Bush will pick up U.S. policy toward North Korea where the Clinton administration left it--the warmest relationship between the governments since the start of the Korean War half a century ago.

“The South Koreans would like to lock things down,” a senior Republican staff member said. “We are just saying the president should go slow.”

The State Department said there are no plans to change the $5.1-billion program.

“Secretary [of State Colin L.] Powell has made clear that he wants to work on the basis of the understandings, agreements and work that had been done in the past,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. “We remain committed to carrying them out, and we are continuing to do that.”

The 1994 agreement provides North Korea with two new nuclear reactors to replace a facility that U.S. officials said was being used as part of a nuclear weapons program. The new plant, which uses light-water technology, produces a grade of plutonium that cannot be turned into weapons-grade fuel. The reactors that North Korea agreed to dismantle used gas-graphite technology that can be used to make fuel for a bomb.

In their letter to the president, Hyde, Markey and Cox said the administration has an opportunity to forge a solid bipartisan policy toward North Korea. But they said that will “require extensive consultations between the new officials of your administration and interested members of Congress.”

“Serious questions have emerged about safety, liability, licensing, the condition of North Korea’s electric power grid and the stability of alternate sources of electric power, to say nothing of the need to ensure that North Korea fulfills its obligations under the agreed framework and other pertinent international agreements,” the lawmakers wrote.

Construction is already underway on North Korea’s northeastern coast. The financing deal worked out by the international consortium that is building the reactors calls for South Korea to provide most of the money, with Japan and the European Union also contributing. But officials of all the governments involved say the plan will not work without U.S. participation.