N. Korea Hardens Arms Stance

North Korea is taking an increasingly hard line on the issue of nuclear disarmament talks and says it won’t even discuss dismantling its atomic weapons until Washington has normalized relations, a U.S. scholar who recently visited the North said Saturday.

Selig Harrison of the Washington-based Center for International Policy said the new stance reflected fears of a U.S. attack and frustration over the regime’s contacts with Washington so far.

“The chance to negotiate is gone,” Harrison said. “They told me that they are not prepared to discuss dismantling their nuclear weapons until their relations with the United States, economic and diplomatic, have been normalized.”

According to Harrison, North Korean officials said they would not return to the six-nation talks held in China until Washington apologized for calling North Korea one of the world’s “outposts of tyranny.”

The best that the United States, Japan, Russia, South Korea and China can hope for if talks resume is a freeze of existing programs, he said.

“They did make clear that they are ready to freeze their nuclear arsenal,” Harrison said in Beijing. But he added that there had been a “major” policy shift in Pyongyang in recent weeks.

“The hard-line elements there are riding high, the army has increasingly asserted its control over nuclear policy,” he said.

Harrison said North Korean officials rejected a proposal to give up their nuclear program in stages in exchange for aid.

Harrison said he met last week with Kim Yong Nam, head of North Korea’s legislature; Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju; and Kim Gye Gwan, the North’s envoy to the nuclear talks. He said he did not meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

The North said in February that it had “nukes,” yet outsiders have seen no proof. But “the body language and my entire experience there this time,” Harrison said, “made me more prepared to believe that they have some operational weapons.”

Harrison said a top North Korean general warned that Pyongyang would retaliate if Washington tried to impose an embargo.

“That would be the beginning of a war and we would have the right to attack the U.S., including the U.S. mainland,” Harrison quoted Col. Gen. Ri Chan Bok, the North’s commander on its frontier with South Korea, as saying.

Harrison said North Korean officials were insisting on the formal commitment to peace because of concerns that President Bush was pursuing regime change in the North.

“They really do feel threatened,” Harrison said.

The U.S. has been relying on China, the North’s old ally and the provider of most of its food and fuel aid, to push Pyongyang back to the table, but Harrison said trade between the two was booming.

“China is buying all the North Korean minerals and metals it can get,” he said. “It shows that China is not exerting any economic leverage to push North Korea to talks.”