Rice, Japan map strategy for North Korea talks

By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent

TOKYO (Reuters) – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
mapped strategy with Japanese leaders on Tuesday before a new
round of North Korea talks that U.S. officials fear will fail
to persuade Pyongyang to surrender its nuclear arms.

U.S. officials said the North Korean side is saying that a
nuclear-free Korean peninsula was the “dying wish” of the late
leader Kim Il-sung and this might be a way for Pyongyang to
explain its decision to return to talks on July 25 after
resisting for more than a year.

But officials traveling with Rice in Asia said they have
seen no concrete sign the communist state would surrender its
nuclear capability — which U.S. intelligence estimates at more
than eight weapons. Many experts doubt this will happen.

“I don’t believe that talks will convince the North Koreans
to abandon their program,” former Pentagon official Daniel
Bluemthal, from the pro-Bush American Enterprise Institute,
told Reuters by telephone from Washington, D.C.

“Pyongyang’s nuclear aspirations go to the core of the
regime’s raison d’etre — ensuring its own survival and
forcefully unifying the peninsula under its control,” the Asia
expert wrote in an analysis on the AEI Web site.

Rice holds talks with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi and Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura before flying
to Seoul to meet South Korean leaders.

She was in Beijing on Saturday when the North announced its
decision to return to six-party talks.

NO NEW INCENTIVES

U.S. allies Japan and South Korea are key players in the
six-party process, along with China, which hosted three
inconclusive rounds in Beijing. Russia also participates.

“The U.S. must make sure that the Chinese and the South
Koreans are in the end willing to raise the bar high enough
that we are actually dealing with this problem for the last
time,” said Scott Snyder of the Asia Foundation office in
Washington.

But Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea,
said: “The biggest overall problem is trust.” “The two (United
States and North Korea) as they sit down will be like people
looking at each other from opposite edges of the Grand Canyon.”

The United States laid down a negotiating proposal in June
2004 that was quickly denounced by Pyongyang. But China and
South Korea were also critical, urging Washington to outline
more and better benefits that would accrue to Pyongyang if it
abandons its nuclear ambitions.

While insisting Washington would offer no new incentives to
bring Pyongyang back to the table, Rice and other officials
said the proposal was just a starting position and there was
room to alter its terms once serious negotiations start.

Some experts question just how much flexibility U.S.
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Christopher
Hill will have in negotiations.

A hardline Bush administration faction, including Vice
President Dick Cheney, has been viewed as opposed to talks with
Pyongyang and eager to shape U.S. policy to encourage the
regime’s collapse.

But Hill is comfortable with the freedom he has been given
so far, a U.S. official said. (KOREA-NORTH-USA; editing by
Elizabeth Piper; carol.giacomo@reuters.com; + 202 898 8300))