N. Korea’s Neighbors, U.S. Issue Ultimatum

Japan, South Korea and the United States joined forces Saturday against North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, laying down an ultimatum to Pyongyang to abandon its uranium enrichment program. But they left open the possibility of engagement and assistance in the future.

At a three-way meeting in this Baja beach resort, President Bush and the leaders of Japan and South Korea denounced North Korea’s recently acknowledged development of weapons-grade uranium and demanded that the impoverished totalitarian state “dismantle this program in a prompt and verifiable manner.”

But they also said Japan and South Korea would not go further and cancel upcoming talks with North Korean officials, and the United States hinted that it may be willing to engage the North in the future.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the joint policy is designed to be firm but patient, recognizing that harsher measures might backfire.

“We want to make sure that we move deliberately, we move with patience, that we do not create a crisis in the region,” Powell told reporters.

But, he added, there would be no quid pro quo.

“You can’t violate an agreement and then show up and say, ‘We violated this agreement. What will you pay us for this violation in order to get out of the violation?’ ” Powell said.

Japan has been holding talks with North Korea on normalizing relations, with the next session scheduled this week in Malaysia.

In their statement, the leaders said those meetings would go forward because they “can serve as important channels” to pressure North Korea.

Bush met with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi during a summit here of leaders from the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

The two-day gathering, held annually to promote free trade and economic cooperation in the Pacific Rim, has been overshadowed by threats of terrorism and nuclear conflict.

Bush also lobbied Pacific leaders -- in particular Mexican President and APEC host Vicente Fox -- to support a U.S.-proposed United Nations Security Council resolution on use of force in Iraq. Mexico, which is currently a member of the Security Council, has indicated that it prefers milder French and Russian proposals because they have wider support.

“We think broad unanimity is more important for the U.S. cause than details of the resolution,” said Jorge Castaneda, the Mexican foreign minister.

Terrorism was also the prime topic during Bush’s meeting with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Bush offered condolences over the deaths of nearly 200 people in a Bali bombing two weeks ago and expressed understanding of the difficulties she has faced in reining in radical groups.

Earlier in the day, Bush administration officials suggested that they were seeking a harsher condemnation of North Korea. The goal, according to a senior administration official, was “to isolate the North Koreans, make them clear that this is not cost-free, get them to think about their own future. If they want to engage with the world, they’re going to have to give up that program.”

But the diplomatic strategy that emerged from the talks acceded to South Korean and Japanese desires for a policy balanced between carrots and sticks.

Experts have warned that it would be dangerous to further antagonize North Korea, since it could decide to restart its plutonium-based weapons program, which it agreed to freeze in 1994. North Korea reportedly is years away from making a nuclear bomb using enriched uranium but would need only months to make a plutonium-based bomb.

South Korea and Japan have argued against cutting off contact with the North and said they will go ahead with scheduled meetings and exchanges. A high-level North Korean economic delegation that includes Chang Sung Taek, a brother-in-law of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, arrived Saturday in Seoul for a nine-day tour of South Korean factories and high-tech facilities.

The task, according to a senior Japanese diplomat, is “applying continuous pressure but not cornering North Korea ... to the extent that they might scratch back like a cornered cat.”

In that vein, the leaders’ joint statement seemed to offer the North Koreans a small carrot from the United States. In recent days, the North Koreans have sought a nonaggression pledge from the U.S. The statement did offer one, although it was a restatement of previous policy.

“President Bush reiterated his February statement in South Korea that the United States has no intention of invading North Korea, as well as the fact that he had been prepared to pursue a bold approach to transforming” U.S.-North Korea relations, the statement said.

Powell stressed that the United States has no plans to meet with any North Korean officials and that in all upcoming contacts by Japan and South Korea, the issue of the enriched-uranium program will be “uppermost.”

The joint statement appeared to resolve, at least for the time being, a potentially awkward disagreement among the three countries over how hard to press North Korea on nuclear issues.

In South Korea, the nuclear crisis has been shrugged off in some quarters as a creation of an overly hysterical and hawkish White House.

“Nuclear crisis? What Crisis?” read the headline of an editorial Friday in the South Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo, describing the reaction of the South’s government.

“There is a delicate difference of opinion between the United States and South Korea about how serious this whole nuclear matter is and whether the North is serious about developing nuclear weapons,” said Paik Jin Hyun of Seoul National University. “Many people claim that the North admitted the nuclear program to express their willingness to talk to the United States.”

U.S. officials said that is now the common understanding and that, as a result, engagement, not confrontation, is the aim.

“The threat from North Korea is one ... we do have the luxury of addressing through diplomatic means,” said the senior Bush administration official. “And we think diplomatic means, obviously, are much more effective in this particular case.”

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Times staff writers Sonni Efron and Richard Boudreaux in Cabo San Lucas and Barbara Demick in Seoul contributed to this report.