US Democrats urge bilateral US-NKorea talks

WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (Reuters) Some leading US Democratic senators joined a growing chorus of voices calling on the Bush administration to engage in bilateral talks with North Korea to persuade the communist state to abandon its nuclear weapons programs.

Carl Levin, the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said President George W Bush should abandon his resistance to one-on-one talks with North Korea and appoint a special envoy to deal with Pyongyang.

''Providing our allies and partners want us to talk with the North Koreans, bilaterally, one-on-one, we should do so,'' he said, adding that he believed South Korea, China and Russia supported such talks.

''Our refusal to do so just plays into the hands of the North Koreans,'' Levin said yesterday.

Levin's call for talks came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice toured Asia to reassure allies about US security commitments and amid reports North Korea could conduct more nuclear tests following its October 9 underground explosion.

North Korea has long insisted on bilateral negotiations with Washington, which has only accepted one-on-one talks with Pyongyang in the context of six-party negotiations that also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

Levin said Bush presented a ''false choice'' between multilateral talks and going it alone -- as Washington did when it struck a nuclear freeze pact in 1994 which unraveled in 2002 after Pyongyang was found in violation of that deal.

Levin also urged Bush to swiftly implement a provision of the 2007 defense authorization bill calling on him to appoint a coordinator for North Korea policy, a figure with bipartisan support to ''try to end this paralysis and this ongoing debate in the administration about regime change and engagement.'' TEST PYONGYANG WITH TALKS The recommendations by Levin, who was joined by Sen Jack Reed of Rhode Island, marked a more concrete response to North Korea's nuclear test than previously heard from the Democrats, who have sharply criticized Bush but not offered substantial new plans in the run-up to Nov 7 congressional elections.

Some analysts who have backed the administration effort to implement UN sanctions with allies also urged US-North Korea talks now that Pyongyang has exploded a nuclear device.

''We'll eventually need to sit down and talk not only about disincentives -- coercive measures -- but also incentives,'' said Andrew Grotto, senior national security analyst at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank.

''There's never been a country that's given up nuclear weapons solely under the threat of coercion,'' he said.

Derek Mitchell, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who served at the Pentagon under former President Bill Clinton, said, ''This is no time for concessions to North Korea because it just seems like we're conceding to blackmail.'' But he added: ''A bilateral effort will be necessary, at least to test North Korea. And we would very much expect reciprocity from the North and if they don't provide it, we would pursue an isolation strategy ourselves.'' REUTERS AD RAI0748