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Rice, Japan map strategy for North Korea talks

Posted on: Monday, 11 July 2005, 17:19 CDT

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))

Source: REUTERS

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