[USFK Forums] U.S.-North Korea ties all but severed [USA TODAY]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Posted 1/15/2006 9:04 PM Updated 1/15/2006 9:07 PM

U.S.-North Korea ties all but severed

By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY

While the United States tries to restart talks with North Korea over its nuclear program, the few official ties between the nations are disappearing.

[PHOTO - Unloadable] A U.N. honor guard carries a coffin as remains of Americans missing from the war are returned.
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

In the past eight months, programs to recover the remains of U.S. war dead, feed hungry North Koreans and build civilian nuclear power plants have been scrapped.

"The official U.S. connections have atrophied," said Donald Gregg, U.S. ambassador to South Korea under the first President Bush and now president of the Korea Society

The loss of contacts between North Koreans and Americans involved in these programs might make it harder to resolve the main dispute between the countries. North Korea could have as many as 13 nuclear weapons, according to the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank.

The isolation is North Korea's fault, said Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of State for Asia. Once the North Koreans understand "there's no role for nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula," Hill said last week, "the sooner they will have a brighter future."

Ties between the United States and North Korea grew after a 1994 agreement in which the North Koreans promised to trade nuclear weapons development for aid and diplomatic recognition. But neither side completed the deal.

In October 2002, the North Koreans admitted trying to enrich uranium, and the Bush administration stopped deliveries of heavy fuel oil. North Korea then resumed its nuclear weapons program. One by one, other contacts have collapsed:

• Last weekend, staff of the U.S.-led Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization abandoned two unfinished nuclear reactors in North Korea.

The organization was created under the 1994 agreement to build the plants, but work was suspended in 2003 after North Korea admitted working on uranium enrichment.

The organization is expected to fold within a few months, said Charles Kartman, its former executive director.

• On Jan. 1, the United Nations World Food Program mission in North Korea, headed by an American, stopped feeding children at the request of North Korea. That country said it doesn't need the aid, which came mostly from the United States and helped save thousands from starving after a famine in the mid-1990s.

• In May, the Pentagon suspended a program that had U.S. and North Korean soldiers searching for the remains of Americans missing from the 1950-53 Korean War. The Pentagon cited difficulty in communicating with Americans working in North Korea, but it had not reported any problems in a decade of recovery efforts.

North Korea and the United States were "full of hope" that those links would improve relations between the two nations, said Kartman, who led U.S. talks with the North Koreans during the Clinton administration. Now relations are so bad that "both sides are convinced there is no hope."

Meanwhile, six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons programs are in limbo.

In September, the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan reached a tentative deal trading North Korea's abandonment of nuclear programs for energy aid, security assurances and promises of a diplomatic thaw. North Korea undermined the deal by insisting that other countries first agree to provide civilian nuclear reactors, an echo of the 1994 pact.

The Bush administration then angered North Korea by forbidding U.S. business with an Asian bank and several North Korean companies suspected of involvement in counterfeiting and other illegal activities.

Hill said the North Koreans used the sanctions as an excuse not to return to negotiations. "We always knew that when we went from the stage of laying out principles to implementation, things would get more difficult," he said. He urged North Korea to "show us that you are serious" by declaring its nuclear materials and sites.

Hill spoke before visiting Japan, South Korea and China to try to revive talks, last held in November. He has not visited North Korea.

Despite Hill's efforts, the Bush administration appears willing to let China and South Korea do most of the work, Gregg said. China and South Korea are providing large amounts of food and fuel to North Korea. South Korean companies are employing several thousand North Koreans at companies in a special investment zone just north of the border.

Such "handouts" won't create a successful economy, Hill said. The only way North Korea can prosper, he said, is by giving up its nuclear program



[THE END]