US envoy trip marks concession to NKorea

Washington, June 24: US envoy Christopher Hill's surprise trip to North Korea this week represented another major concession by President George W Bush, who had earlier insisted Pyongyang first shut down its main nuclear weapons facility.

The overnight stay, making Hill the highest-ranking US official to visit the reclusive communist state in five years, was something of a gamble for Bush and further distressed conservative US supporters whose hard line against Pyongyang the president had long shared.

But facing foreign policy debacles in Iraq, Iran and North Korea as well as the Arab-Israeli conflict, Bush arguably has little more to lose by aggressively testing a long-shot negotiated deal with Pyongyang.

After the visit, which he had long urged Bush to approve, Hill predicted Pyongyang would shutter the Yongbyon reactor at the heart of its nuclear arms program within three weeks.

One obstacle to implementing a deal to disable the reactor appeared to have been removed when Russia confirmed on Saturday million in North Korea funds, frozen in Macau at the behest of Washington, had been transferred to a Russian bank.

''You've got to gauge Hill's trip by saying finally US diplomacy is rational. He should have been doing this long ago,'' said Charles Pritchard, former senior US negotiator with North Korea during Bush's first term.

At a minimum, the trip allowed Hill to learn more about his negotiating partners, deliver the US message to a wider group of North Korean officials and create new momentum for the negotiating process, he said in an interview.

For most of his term, Bush established ''false preconditions'' including virtually barring bilateral talks with North Korea and insisting Hill's trip occur only after Yongbyon was de-activated, said Pritchard, author of a new book on North Korea called ''Failed Diplomacy.'' ''When you've established false preconditions, you inevitably regret them because they work against you. ... That's not how diplomacy works and (the administration) has had a track record of six years of watching it fail,'' he added.

Policy Change

Typically, administration officials insisted no policy change has occurred.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack even asserted that ''dialogue in and of itself is not a reward,'' adopting a mantra that supporters of regular direct engagement with Pyongyang had long espoused.

But the trajectory of US policy toward North Korea during Bush's two terms has been dramatic.

In 2001, when President Bill Clinton left office, the plutonium-based nuclear reactor at Yongbyon was frozen, the North possessed plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had met top leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyong and the two sides were talking about a missile deal.

Since then, operations at Yongbyon were restarted and now Washington is trying again to ensure they are halted under a Feb. 13 agreement; the North may have plutonium for 8 to 12 weapons; it tested a nuclear device last October 9 and there are no missile talks.

Washington's 2002 revelation that Pyongyang initiated a secret uranium enrichment program, which like plutonium can be used for nuclear weapons, gave US hardliners a new argument for obstructing negotiations but the issue has since receded.

After leaving Pyongyang, Hill said he expects Yongbyon's shut down probably within three weeks.

He had talks there with the North's chief negotiator and its new foreign minister.

Experts say nothing should be read into the fact Hill did not meet top leader Kim Jong-il because Hill is not senior enough and US-North Korea relations have not advanced enough to warrant that engagement.

But there is some puzzlement over why Hill did not see Kim's key aide, Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju.

Wendy Sherman, former State Department counselor and envoy for North Korea, said she was encouraged by Hill's visit and the new momentum it gave to the six-party negotiating process involving the United States, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and China.

But ''the fact remains that seven years into the Bush administration, North Korea has at least four times the plutonium and probably the nuclear weapons and it has conducted a nuclear test,' she said in an interview.

''Hopefully, Ambassador Hill is at a point where we'll stop further production of plutonium and disable the reactor but we have a very long way to even get back to where things were when Clinton administration ended,'' she added.

Reuters

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