NYTimes.com Article: Bush and South Korean President Are Vague on North

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by tganesh@stlawu.edu.


What is to happen in North Korea?  Sanger's piece suggests that an attack on 
North Korea may not be in the offing, but it also suggests a new rapprochement 
between South Korea and the US, which leaves the future of North Korea 
uncertain.  China of course is still staying off the screen. Or is it?

tganesh@stlawu.edu

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Bush and South Korean President Are Vague on North Korea Strategy

May 15, 2003
By DAVID E. SANGER 




 

WASHINGTON, May 14 - President Bush and South Korea's new
president, Roh Moo Hyun, emerged tonight from their first
meeting declaring that the two countries "will not tolerate
nuclear weapons in North Korea." But in a series of vague
diplomatic statements they stepped around serious
differences about whether to isolate the country with an
economic embargo or threaten it with a military strike. 

Appearing in the Rose Garden this evening, the two men said
they had developed a quick friendship that would aid them
in one of the tensest standoffs in the region in decades.
In sharp contrast to the kind of language he used about
Iraq and Saddam Hussein when foreign leaders visited him
earlier this year, Mr. Bush did not publicly demand today
that North Korea open itself up to inspections or stop
producing bomb-grade material, and he never uttered the
name of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il. 

"We're making good progress toward achieving that peaceful
resolution of the issue of the Korean Peninsula in regards
to North Korea," Mr. Bush said as he and Mr. Roh, a former
human rights lawyer and legislator, talked briefly to
reporters. 

They did not take questions and did not specify what kind
of progress Mr. Bush was referring to. 

On Monday, North Korea said it had "nullified" an agreement
with South Korea committing to keep the Korean Peninsula
nuclear-free. But the statements fit a White House
strategy, aides said, of playing down the North Korean
threat, and demonstrating to Mr. Kim that the United States
would not give in to what Mr. Bush recently called
blackmail. 

Nonetheless, the differences in strategy were clearly
evident today. 

This morning, in an advertisement paid for by the South
Korean government, Mr. Roh was described as seeking
American agreement to "rule out a military option" in
confronting the North, a reference to the Pentagon's
longtime contingency plan to knock out the North Korean
nuclear complex at Yongbyon. 

But today both the national security adviser, Condoleezza
Rice, and the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said it
would be unwise to rule out the use of military force, even
while pursuing a peaceful resolution of the problem. 

"No one should be willing to give in to the kind of
blackmail that the North Koreans have been practicing on
the world for a number of years now, especially not the
United States," Ms. Rice told reporters today. 

She said the president reserved all his military options,
though she added that Mr. Bush might be willing to engage
in another round of negotiations with the North Koreans,
after a meeting in Beijing last month in which the North
declared that it already possessed weapons, and had turned
8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into bomb-grade plutonium. 

"We are not fearful of talks, and if we believe that they
are useful at some point in time we would be more than
willing to re-enter them," Ms. Rice said. 

Mr. Roh said on Monday that he would seek to have the
United States delay any redeployment of American troops
from the border with North Korea until the nuclear issue
was resolved. He also said it was far too early to discuss
economic quarantine measures that would cut off the North's
exports of missiles, drugs and counterfeit currency, all of
which are widely believed to give the nation a steady
supply of hard currency. 

But a senior American official, speaking tonight after the
40-minute conversation between the leaders had ended in the
Oval Office, said that the issues had not come up directly.
Asked if Mr. Roh had sought Mr. Bush's assurance that
American force would not be used, the official said, "He
didn't ask for it." 

He said they did not discuss an embargo, either, though
other American officials say the planning for intercepting
North Korean ships at sea is now quite advanced. 

But before that effort could become effective it would
require the participation of Japan, South Korea and, most
important, China. Mr. Roh has made it clear that he
believes it is too early to consider such a provocative
step, which North Korea has called tantamount to war. 

"There isn't an on-off switch here," one senior official
said tonight, suggesting that the United States and other
countries might gradually increase the pressure on North
Korea. 

This was Mr. Roh's first visit to the United States and an
important one to him: he wrote a book about Abraham
Lincoln, and Mr. Bush took him on a tour this evening of
the Lincoln Bedroom, showing him the White House copy of
the Emancipation Proclamation and other Lincoln artifacts.
The men then had dinner with members of their cabinets. 

The joint statement that the men issued tonight was
deliberately vague on the question of when and how pressure
could be increased on North Korea. 

"While noting that increased threats to peace and stability
on the peninsula would require consideration of further
steps," the statement said, Mr. Bush and Mr. Roh "expressed
confidence that a peaceful resolution can be achieved." 

The vague wording reflects the differing approaches to the
problem within the two countries. Mr. Roh said in an
interview on Monday that any threats to North Korea could
scare away investors and undercut the fragile South Korean
economy. At a moment when many of the countries' largest
conglomerates, known in Korea as chaebol, are in crisis,
that is a problem Mr. Roh can ill afford. 

Mr. Bush's team, for its part, is deeply divided. Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell pushed hard, over the objection of
administration hard-liners, to open negotiations with North
Korea. 

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and members of Vice
President Dick Cheney's staff have pressed for a much
harder line. Mr. Rumsfeld circulated a memorandum several
weeks ago seeking an administration strategy to get China
to join in an economic embargo intended to bring down Mr.
Kim's Communist government. Chinese officials have said
they think that would be a disastrous course, leading to
instability and a flood of refugees. 

Mr. Roh said on Monday that he was coming to Washington
"concerned" about the hard-liners in the administration,
adding that "many people are concerned that President
Bush's `peaceful resolution' principle may change in the
future, despite his assurance otherwise." 

But tonight, after meeting Mr. Rumsfeld and then Mr. Bush,
he told reporters: "When I left Korea, I had both concerns
and hopes in my mind. Now, after having talked to President
Bush, I have gotten rid of all my concerns." 

That statement was viewed as important to the White House,
because the administration's first meeting with Mr. Roh's
predecessor, Kim Dae Jung, in 2001 was widely considered a
diplomatic disaster. The two men split sharply on how to
deal with the North, and never re-engaged in serious talks.
A rift opened between Mr. Powell and administration hawks
that foreshadowed later clashes on Iraq and other issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/15/international/asia/15PREX.html?ex=1054032288&ei=1&en=4f6b300d14d49f0a


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