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Rice optimistic North Korea talks can bear fruit

Posted on: Wednesday, 13 July 2005, 07:35 CDT

By Jon Herskovitz and Carol Giacomo

SEOUL (Reuters) - The United States and South Korea are optimistic North Korea, enticed by energy aid, might agree to scrap its nuclear plans and so defuse one of the world's most dangerous crises, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday.

Her comments, the most upbeat by a U.S. official on North Korea in months, came two weeks before stalled six-way nuclear talks resume and after South Korea offered to supply electricity to the North if it dismantled its nuclear programs.

"We are very optimistic that our joint efforts to improve the security situation on the Korean peninsula could indeed bear fruit, although, of course, there is still much work to be done," she said after meeting South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.

"I actually think it's quite interesting that the North has responded by saying that, yes, it is not only coming back to the talks but it hopes to make progress," Rice said.

North Korea declared in February it had nuclear weapons.

After holding out for a year, it agreed last weekend to return to the talks on ending its nuclear plans. Other countries taking part include China, which is hosting the meetings, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, meeting a Chinese envoy on Wednesday, told him that "realizing a denuclearised Korean peninsula is our conscientious goal," the Xinhua news agency reported.

Pyongyang announced its decision on the talks as Rice began a tour of Asia, which was to take her to China, Thailand and Japan before winding up in Seoul.

Analysts said it was too early to say whether her tour marked a turning point in the crisis, but they noted that Seoul's electricity offer played a crucial role in coaxing the North back to the table and convincing Washington there could be movement.

Rice said the proposal was creative and built on an existing U.S.-backed proposal to the North made at the third round in June 2004 of fuel aid from others and U.S. security guarantees to North Korea if it gave up its nuclear weapons programs.

South Korea said it had offered to supply the North with 2,000 megawatts of electricity, almost the equivalent of its present output.

Rice said it was easy to understand North Korea's energy needs by looking at satellite photographs of the Korean peninsula at night that show a brightly lit southern half and near pitch-darkness in the north.

The Roh administration is ready to seek parliamentary approval for its energy plan, if it is needed, Yonhap news quoted a senior official as saying.

IS IT ENOUGH?

Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a prominent think-tank on Asian affairs, called Seoul's move "a stroke of genius" because the offer could please Pyongyang and Washington while helping the diplomatic process.

As part of that deal, Seoul would ask for the scrapping of a stalled project to supply North Korea with two proliferation-resistant light-water reactors that were promised in a 1994 deal brokered by the Clinton administration.

Cossa was unsure whether electricity and previous pledges of security guarantees would be enough to convince the North to abandon nuclear weapons, which Pyongyang has said it needs to counter Washington's hostility toward it.

"The nuclear weapons are not the objective for Pyongyang's leaders. It is survival. The parties need to convince them that they can survive without nuclear weapons and that having them decreases their chance of survival," Cossa said.

A senior South Korean National Security Council official said Seoul as yet had no good estimate on how much it would cost to set up the power supply for the North. South Korea could use $2.4 billion it had allocated for the light-water reactor project to fund the electric power plan, he told reporters.

"We are looking at this as part of the cost of unification," said the official, who asked not to be named. "Unless a war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, we will not cut off the power."

South Korean officials said the North had been pressing for years for help in generating electricity and they thought the sweetener would help Pyongyang agree to a nuclear deal.

(With additional reporting by Park Sung-woo and Jack Kim)

Source: REUTERS

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