U.S. Hints at Aid if N. Korea Abandons Arms

Signaling a more conciliatory stance toward North Korea, a top U.S. diplomat said here that the United States might help the impoverished communist state with its chronic energy shortages if it renounces its nuclear ambitions.

After meeting this morning with South Korean officials, Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly hinted that the Bush administration would be willing to strike a deal, despite its previous position that the U.S. would provide no inducements to get Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

“We know there are energy problems in North Korea. Once we get beyond the nuclear problems, there may be an opportunity with the United States, with private investors, or with other countries to help North Korea in the energy area,” Kelly said in response to a reporter’s question at a news conference in Seoul.

The U.S. decided to suspend shipments of fuel oil to the North in November after learning that Pyongyang had begun a uranium-enrichment program.

“We are willing to talk to North Korea about their response to the international community,” Kelly said today.

His comments are sure to be applauded by South Korean officials, who had been openly complaining that an uncompromising stance by the Bush administration was aggravating the nuclear crisis. Kelly met earlier in the day with Roh Moo Hyun, elected Dec. 19 as South Korea’s next president after a campaign in which he sought to forge a foreign policy more independent of the United States.

The Americans “seem to be backing down a little. So far the United States has had its way in pushing its own policy agenda, but they seem to realize that will not be possible with the new South Korean government,” said Ko Yu Han, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University here.

South Korea has been experiencing a wave of anti-American sentiment, in part spurred by a fear the U.S. is inciting the crisis.

“The messenger of death that brings nuclear war,” read a placard held by one South Korean student demonstrating outside the building where Kelly was speaking today.

Kelly, a well-respected Asia specialist, in particular is controversial here because he was the envoy who confronted the North Koreans in October with evidence that they were secretly enriching uranium in violation of a 1994 international treaty.

There is a dispute about what exactly was said in that meeting in Pyongyang between Kelly and North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju. Some South Koreans, including advisors to President-elect Roh, believe that the North Korean did not say his country was pulling out of the 1994 pact. The South Koreans have been pressing for the State Department to release a transcript or tape of the meeting.

Pyongyang said Sunday through its official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, that the U.S. claim that North Korea admitted the secret program to Kelly “is an invention fabricated by the United States with sinister intentions,” a South Korean news agency reported.

The statement may have been an effort to sharpen divisions between South Korea and the United States as those talks begin, analysts speculated. The North Korean newspaper also blamed the United States for the crisis, warning that “if the United States evades its responsibility and challenges us, we’ll turn the citadel of imperialism into a sea of fire.”

In his public remarks, Kelly did not directly address the dispute over his October meeting in Pyongyang. But he hinted that the administration might even be willing to resuscitate the 1994 treaty under which the United States and allies agreed to build two light-water nuclear reactors for North Korea in exchange for a suspension of its nuclear program.

“Where the agreed framework [the 1994 deal] is going, I don’t know. It is not in very good health,” said Kelly, stopping short of calling the deal dead.

North Korea has been sending contradictory signals in recent days, angrily threatening the United States even as it urged a negotiated settlement and sent representatives to talk with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who served as U.N. ambassador in the Clinton administration.

On Friday, Pyongyang announced its withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a keystone weapons agreement that dates to 1970, and Saturday it threatened to resume its ballistic missile test program.

Diplomatic efforts continued on other fronts Sunday. In Moscow, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Sunday that Russia was trying to get all the affected parties to embrace a Russian-drafted “package solution.”

Alexander Yakovenko, spokesman for Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, said Ivanov was involved in intensive mediation efforts over the weekend, making phone calls Saturday to U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the foreign ministers of China, France and South Korea.

The goal was to push a Russian proposal that would try to get North Korea to return to international agreements in exchange for a promise of dialogue with the United States and guarantees of its security and foreign aid.

“The escalation of tension has to be urgently stopped,” the ministry said in a statement. “And the solution can only be a package one ... that takes into account the interests of all parties involved and meets the purpose of lasting peace on the Korean peninsula.”

Yakovenko said that details were still being worked out, but that Russia’s proposed compromise has three main elements:

* Establishing a nuclear-free status for the Korean peninsula, strict observance of the nonproliferation treaty and adherence to obligations under other international agreements, including the 1994 Agreed Framework, in which Pyongyang agreed to halt its nuclear program in return for energy assistance from the United States.

* Beginning a “constructive dialogue” among all the concerned parties, intended to lead to security guarantees for North Korea.

* Resuming the humanitarian and economic programs that have aided North Korea in the past.

Yakovenko said Russia believes it is still too early to take the North Korean question to the U.N. Security Council because “negotiating possibilities are far from being exhausted.”

Moscow has maintained good relations with the North Korean regime, and considers itself a potential go-between. Since the crisis emerged, Russian officials have argued that a soft approach by the United States would yield the best results.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov said Sunday that Russia does not consider North Korea’s withdrawal from the nonproliferation treaty to be “a threat” to Russia’s security.

Nevertheless, he said, Russia would prefer a “nonnuclear” status for North Korea, which shares a border with the Russian Far East.

If North Korea needs an internationally sanctioned atomic power plant, Russia would be willing to build it, said Russia’s nuclear power minister, Alexander Rumyantsev.

U.S. officials had no immediate comment on Moscow’s effort.

In Washington, the Bush administration’s handling of the situation came in for criticism Sunday from both Republicans and Democrats.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on ABC’s “This Week” that “it would be a mistake to rule out military action today, although it must be the last option.”

President Bush and other officials, in an apparent effort to calm matters, have insisted that the United States does not plan military action against North Korea.

Richardson, who Saturday concluded three days of talks with North Korean diplomats, urged the administration to move swiftly to direct talks with Pyongyang.

“What I think the administration needs to do ... is just pick up the phone, start the preliminary talks at the U.N. in New York, at a low level, to set up broader talks,” he said on “This Week.”

Some Democrats charged that the administration has fed the crisis by harsh personal criticism of the North Koreans.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said administration officials should not say they “loathe” North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il or call the nation a member of an “axis of evil.”

Bush has done both.

“This kind of rhetoric just plays right into the paranoia of North Korea,” he said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, who was President Clinton’s national security advisor, said the Bush administration needs to stop criticizing the Clinton team’s efforts to restrain the North Korean nuclear program. “For some people in this administration, I’m beginning to think that blaming Clinton is a substitute for thinking,” Berger said on CNN.

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Demick reported from Seoul, Richter from Washington and Daniszewski from Moscow. Chi Jung Nam of the Los Angeles Times Seoul Bureau also contributed to this report.