U.S. Rejects N. Korea’s Demand

The White House on Friday rejected North Korean demands for one-on-one talks, insisting that it would discuss Pyongyang’s nuclear program only if four regional governments took part as well.

In a sign of support for the Bush administration’s approach, Japan, China and South Korea joined the U.S. call for Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to return to the stalled six-party disarmament talks.

A day after North Korea jolted the world by publicly declaring that it has nuclear capability, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, “It’s not an issue between the United States and North Korea. It’s a regional issue. And it’s an issue that impacts all of its neighbors.”

Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, speaking to reporters in Sapporo, said, “I understand calls for imposing sanctions are growing. But we have to urge them to come to the talks in the first place.”

Koizumi said Friday that the crisis was increasing tensions from a separate dispute with North Korea: the kidnapping of at least 13 Japanese citizens from coastal towns during the Cold War. Five of them have returned to Japan; North Korea maintains that the rest are dead. But doubts remain in Japan, and public pressure is growing to squeeze more details out of Pyongyang, possibly with economic sanctions.

U.S. officials and others have believed for a decade that North Korea has nuclear weapons.

Thursday’s declaration was a reminder that the U.S. faced an urgent proliferation challenge on the Korean peninsula as well as in Iran. Washington and its allies generally interpreted the North Korean statement as a sign that the impoverished regime wanted to begin negotiations from a strong position.

Pyongyang’s demand for direct talks with Washington was delivered Friday by its ambassador to the United Nations, Han Song Ryol. In an interview with the South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh, Han said North Korea would return to the six-party talks “when we see a reason to do so and the conditions are ripe.”

“If the United States moves to have direct dialogue with us, we can take that as a signal that the United States is changing its hostile policy toward us,” Han said. Pyongyang had declared Thursday that it intended to abandon the stalled talks.

Han said North Korea had “no other option but to regard the United States’ refusal to have direct dialogue with us as an intention not to recognize us and to eliminate our system.”

Pyongyang, eager for energy aid and economic concessions, angled for direct talks with the United States before agreeing to the six-party negotiations that began in August 2003. But U.S. officials believe the best way to pressure North Korea is by drawing in its neighbors, including China, which provides about 80% of the regime’s energy needs.

Richard Boucher, the chief State Department spokesman, said Friday that when North Korea dealt directly with the Clinton administration in the early 1990s, “we got a deal; and then the North Koreans started cheating on the deal very quickly, within a couple of years.”

Boucher also noted the shifting statements from Pyongyang. “Yesterday they said they were suspending indefinitely; today they said they will come back under certain conditions,” he said. “I don’t want to try to parse this rhetoric too much.”

North Korea’s declaration also brought to light signs of important differences within the upper reaches of the Bush administration on Pyongyang.

One former senior official in the Bush administration, speaking Thursday in Washington, said U.S. policy might need to be more active.

“North Korea reprocesses plutonium, enriches uranium, has their nuclear reactor going, and ... announces they have nuclear weapons. And what do we talk about? ‘When can we have the next meeting?’ ” said the former official, who insisted that he remain unidentified. “We haven’t started talking about, ‘When can we stop this North Korean nuclear program?’ ”

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Times staff writer Bruce Wallace in Tokyo contributed to this report.