Center for International Policy

Bargain with North Korea

October 22, 2002

By Selig S. Harrison for USA TODAY

The North Korean ambassador to the United Nations leaned forward across the luncheon table. "We are ready to negotiate," he told me, "but your people are very highhanded. They demand this; they demand that. They issue one-sided ultimatums to us. We have made clear that we are prepared to resolve all issues of concern to you relating to nuclear weapons and missiles, if only you will address our own concerns."

It was clear from my two-hour conversation with Ambassador Han Song Ryol last week why North Korea has acknowledged that it is attempting to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang is bargaining. The Bush administration should respond positively to its offer to negotiate by building on the 1994 U.S. nuclear-freeze agreement with North Korea, not by abrogating it.

According to North Korean and U.S. accounts, First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, meeting on Oct. 4 with visiting U.S. emissary James Kelly, offered to:

· End the effort to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium.

· Continue to abide by existing safeguards on plutonium-based nuclear facilities shut down under the 1994 agreement.

· Accept whatever inspection and verification measures are deemed necessary by the United States.

In return, Kang told Kelly, the United States would have to:

· Make a public pledge not to stage a pre-emptive attack on North Korea.

· Sign a peace agreement ending the Korean War and replacing the 1953 armistice.

· Normalize diplomatic relations, thus opening the way for economic aid from U.S.-controlled multilateral financial institutions.

Kelly says he told Kang that this offer was "upside down": North Korea must first shut down its nuclear program. Only then would the USA "consider" what it might do to meet North Korean concerns.

The Bush administration justifies its refusal to bargain by arguing that the enrichment program is a violation of the 1994 U.S.-North Korean agreement, proving that Pyongyang cannot be trusted. North Korea did indeed violate the spirit of the agreement, but not the letter. While the 1994 accord refers to the shared goal of a "nuclear-free Korean peninsula," it covered only specified plutonium-based facilities then in existence.

Moreover, the United States itself has failed to fulfill two key provisions of the accord: steps to normalize relations and "formal assurances" ruling out "the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the United States" against North Korea.

The new administration's national security doctrine announced on Sept. 20 was, in effect, a repudiation of that second provision, because it asserted that the USA reserves the right to pre-emptively strike - with nuclear weapons, if deemed necessary - any state regarded as a potential peace threat.

North Korea is in a strong bargaining position: It could make four plutonium bombs from spent fuel rods put in storage under the 1994 agreement. Kang told Kelly that North Korea is no longer bound by the agreement. But Pyongyang has yet to violate the ban on reprocessing the spent fuel.

It is critically important for the United States to pursue a dialogue with Pyongyang to keep the key provisions of the 1994 agreement in force, while renegotiating the rest of the accord to settle the nuclear issue once and for all.

Such a dialogue will not be easy. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his more pragmatic advisers, such as Kang, face powerful hard-liners in the armed forces who want to develop nuclear weapons. To give the pragmatists ammunition, the United States should recast the agreement to help meet North Korea's acute energy shortage.

Under the 1994 agreement, two civilian electricity-generating nuclear reactors were to be built by 2003, but construction has not even started. Bush officials are talking of abandoning the project. South Korea and Japan understandably object: They agreed to pay for the reactors and have spent $800 million and $400 million respectively on the project.

Instead of abandoning both reactors, the USA should suggest cutting back to one while supporting a gas pipeline now under discussion that would be a bonanza for both North and South Korea. The proposed pipeline, which could be finished more quickly than the reactors, would run from gas fields off Russia's Sakhalin Island through North Korea to South Korea. ExxonMobil and a Japanese partner control the Sakhalin gas concession and will not pursue a pipeline through North Korea without White House approval.

South Korea wants gas from Sakhalin to offset its dependence on Middle Eastern petroleum. North Korea would get royalties for letting the pipeline pass through its territory and could tap into it to supply some of its own power stations and fertilizer plants.

Using a combination of pipeline gas and nuclear power as a carrot, the administration would have the decisive economic leverage necessary to get North Korea to end its nuclear and missile programs and accept adequate inspection and verification guarantees.

South Korea and Japan would accept such a renegotiated 1994 agreement because their investments would be salvaged if one reactor were built. For Pyongyang, getting a reactor up and running is a political priority because the agreement bore the personal imprimatur of the late Kim Il Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il. Pyongyang is so eager for Sakhalin pipeline gas that it has already given a consortium of Dutch trading companies the right to build a portion of the pipeline.

The $2.7 billion Sakhalin pipeline would not be paid for by the United States, but by the petroleum firms involved and the governments of South Korea and Russia, with possible help from multilateral financial institutions. The combined cost of the pipeline and one reactor would be roughly equivalent to the $4.9 billion projected cost of two reactors.

Kim Jong Il's terms for ending his nuclear program are reasonable. Normalizing relations would speed up economic reforms that would moderate the repressive North Korean system. A peace agreement ending the Korean War is long overdue. Without a U.S. pledge not to stage a first strike, North Korea will inevitably seek to develop a nuclear deterrent.

As the USA learned during the 1994 nuclear crisis with Pyongyang, pressure tactics that drive North Korea into a corner will only strengthen hard-line generals there, with potentially disastrous results for North Korea, South Korea and the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed at the 38th parallel.

Selig S. Harrison, author of Korean Endgame, is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington. He was Northeast Asia bureau chief of The Washington Post and has visited North Korea seven times.