U.S. Refocuses Attention on N. Korea; Talks Planned

With the winding down of the war in Iraq allowing more diplomats to turn to the Korean peninsula, efforts are underway to set up a high-level meeting between the United States and North Korea within a couple of weeks, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

Although the timing and location have not been determined, the meeting could take place in China, which has been unusually active behind the scenes recently in nudging its old Communist ally toward talks, sources say.

The United States would most likely be represented by Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly, who during a visit to Pyongyang in October accused North Korea of cheating on a promise to mothball its nuclear program. That led to a crisis that has yet to cool. China and South Korea, and possibly Japan and Russia, might also participate in the talks.

“This could happen sooner than most people expect. There is a sense of hurry and urgency,” a South Korean official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday.

In Washington, meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell observed that “there has been some overall improvement, I think, in the prospects for dialogue with North Korea.” While declining to provide details on who might take part in discussions, or when, Powell told a group of foreign reporters that “a lot of pieces have come together.”

In a surprise reversal after months of obstinacy, North Korea announced last weekend that it would accept a demand by the United States to hold talks in a multilateral setting.

Diplomats credit the collapse of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime with the apparent breakthrough. North Korea -- like Iraq, a member of what President Bush has called an “axis of evil” -- is similarly a totalitarian country that revolves around a cult of personality, and it would not be a stretch for the North Koreans to imagine the dramatic scenes played out in Baghdad transplanted to Pyongyang.

At the same time, the Bush administration’s successful campaign in Iraq might lead it to be more magnanimous toward North Korea.

“The Iraq war has given the United States the psychological leeway to relax its requirements about talking to North Korea,” said the South Korean official.

There has been a flurry of meetings in New York, Washington, Seoul, Pyongyang and Beijing recently -- most of them unpublicized -- on reopening diplomatic channels on the North Korean nuclear issue.

“Everybody has been motivated post-Iraq to respond. Not just the North Koreans, but the Chinese as well,” said Scott Snyder, the Seoul representative for the San Francisco-based think tank Asia Foundation. “Nobody wants a war in this region.”

Kim Won Wung, a legislator and longtime ally of new South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun who was in Pyongyang last week, said he detected a changed attitude on the part of the North Koreans toward the negotiating process.

“Usually, if the topic comes up about South Korea trying to promote talks between North Korea and the United States, they immediately say, ‘No.’ This time, I got the feeling that they were at least listening,” Kim said.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young Kwan, who has jetted recently between Washington and Beijing pushing for negotiations, told the National Assembly on Tuesday that the atmosphere is ripe for talks.

“The United States is flexible about the terms and forms of such meetings,” Yoon was quoted as saying.

So far, the various meetings have revolved more around the process of getting participants to the table than the substance of prospective talks, with the overriding question being whether talks would be bilateral -- between the United States and North Korea -- or multilateral. What issues will be on the table is likely to be far more difficult to resolve, as Pyongyang must be persuaded to roll back its nuclear program and readmit U.N. arms inspectors it kicked out late last year.

The South Koreans are reportedly working on what is being termed here a “road map” that would point the way toward solving the nuclear crisis.

The Bush administration is seeking not merely a freeze in North Korea’s nuclear program, as was agreed to in a 1994 deal, but a dismantling of any facilities that could be used to produce nuclear weapons. And while the earlier pact called for United States and allies to build two light-water nuclear reactors for the North Koreans to address their energy needs, the Bush administration is opposed to any deal involving nuclear power.

One of the ideas under discussion is a multistage deal under which the North Koreans would freeze their nuclear program in return for a U.S. pledge not to engage in a military buildup around the Korean peninsula. Another proposal would substitute conventional power plants for the light-water reactors -- the advantage being that they could probably provide more immediate relief for chronic energy shortages.

After the revelation in October that North Korea was working on its nuclear program despite the 1994 deal, the United States moved to discontinue energy assistance to the North. That prompted Pyongyang to restart a small nuclear reactor and make preparations for reopening a mothballed reprocessing plant that could extract from spent fuel rods the weapons-grade plutonium needed to build a bomb.

In numerous vitriolic pronouncements in recent months, the North Koreans have declared that they need a nuclear bomb as a deterrent to prevent the United States from attacking them.

But the reprocessing has not started, and diplomats now believe that the North Koreans made a strategic decision recently to switch tactics and pursue a deal.

U.S. specialists on Korea say talks would mark a major step forward, but they emphasize that progress would be a challenge even if all parties convened.

Ashton B. Carter, who helped shape U.S. policy on Korea as a senior defense official in the Clinton administration, said talks would require the Bush administration first of all to finalize a position that appears unresolved because of internal differences.

Carter also said any meeting with the North Koreans would “have to be looked at as an experiment. They’re mysterious enough that you don’t know where they’re going to come out -- or whether it’s even possible to talk them out of going nuclear.”

Eric Heginbotham, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank, predicted that both Washington and Pyongyang would be bent on obtaining more than the aid promises they took away in 1994.

“This is very good news,” said Heginbotham. “But there’s a long way to go.”

Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.