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Bush Sends Letter to N. Korean Leader

Posted on: Thursday, 6 December 2007, 12:00 CST

By DEB RIECHMANN

WASHINGTON - President Bush directly told North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in a letter that the United States expects the secretive regime to keep its promise to fully disclose all nuclear programs, the White House said Thursday.

It was Bush's most personal intervention with Pyongyang since he called the country part of an "axis of evil."

The letter to North Korea underscored Bush's desire to resolve the nuclear standoff with the communist regime, and made plain that the North cannot skirt requirements to fully explain the extent, use and possible spread of nuclear material and technology, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.

That is the message the North has already heard from Bush's nuclear envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, but the Bush letter is a diplomatic exclamation point. It also serves a domestic political purpose - signaling to conservative critics of the North Korea deal that the United States will not roll back its requirements or accept less than a full declaration of the North's nuclear program.

The North agreed to fully account for its nuclear activities by year's end, but U.S. officials acknowledged Thursday that the deadline is likely to slip.

Better to have the complete document in hand a couple of weeks late than to have a half-baked version by the Dec. 31 deadline, one official said, in part because the latter scenario opens the Bush administration to criticism that the North is still hiding things.

The North conducted a clandestine nuclear program for years and proved its entry into the world nuclear club with an underground test explosion last year.

The official said that Hill discussed the likelihood of a late declaration during meetings over the past week with the North and the other four nations bargaining alongside the United States to eventually rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to describe closed-door diplomatic meetings.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed optimism, but also suggested the schedule is sliding.

"It is going to take a monumental effort to get all of this done by the end of the year," she said, speaking to reporters on Thursday as she flew to Brussels for NATO meetings. "And I am not too concerned about whether it's December 31st or not. They seem to be on track. Everybody believes the cooperation is very good."

Hill delivered Bush's letter, dated Dec. 1, to North Korea's foreign minister during Hill's visit to Pyongyang earlier this week. Hill also gave similar letters from Bush to China and South Korea and Japan, and another letter went to the fifth partner, Russia.

Neither the White House nor the State Department would release the letters or describe their content in detail.

"He sent a letter to Kim Jong Il that urged the North Koreans to fully declare their nuclear programs, as called for in the September 2005 six-party agreement," Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Thursday.

The U.S. official, however, said the letter to the North makes reference to the need to resolve three main sticking points: the exact amount of weapons-grade nuclear material the North produced, the number of warheads it built and whether and how North Korea may have passed nuclear material or knowledge to others.

Bush also called Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday to discuss several issues, including North Korea, Johndroe said. The Xinhua News Agency reported that Hu pointed out that the starting action of the relevant joint declaration has been implemented, and the second phase has started. Hu said all parties should keep the dialogue going to meet the target of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, Xinhua said.

The question of proliferation has taken on great significance, and become a political hurdle for the Bush administration, since Israel's air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear site Sept. 6. Intelligence reports suggested that Syria was cooperating in some fashion with North Korea in building the site.

The news that North Korea may have been working with others as recently as this year, after it had agreed to give up its weapons, reinvigorated U.S. domestic opposition to what some conservatives in Congress see as an overly generous deal with an unreliable country.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the president decided to send the letter to "so that we can keep it all on track."

In comments early Thursday, South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon sounded a gloomy note, saying: "There has not been progress on the declaration yet." A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman expressed disappointment that North Korea was likely to miss the year-end deadline, but that it is unlikely to affect the overall agreement.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the six countries were consulting on whether to hold another round of meetings before the end of the year.

On Thursday, Hill suggested that negotiations had stalled on producing a draft declaration of North Korea's nuclear programs by the end of the year. The deadline was part of an agreement the six nations reached in February.

Under the deal, North Korea was promised 1 million tons of fuel oil or the equivalent, plus political concessions such as its removal from a U.S. list of terrorism-supporting nations, in return for disabling its nuclear program and making other moves.

"The disablement activities are going well," Perino said. "I would characterize it as timely because we are nearing the deadline by which they had to declare."

North Korea began disabling its reactor, which was shut down in July, and two other facilities last month under the watch of U.S. experts. It has promised to complete the process by the end of December, but South Korean nuclear envoy Chun Yung-woo said last week it would take longer to remove about 8,000 spent fuel rods from the reactor.

Hill said investigators were seeking to clear up questions over North Korea's purchase in past years of gas centrifuges for its nuclear program.

On the declaration, Hill told reporters in Beijing, where he was meeting diplomats following his visit to North Korea, that Washington and Pyongyang still had differences to resolve on the issue.

Speaking in Seoul, Song called on the U.S. and North Korea to allow some wiggle room on the issue.

"The issue of nuclear declaration is not easy," he told reporters. Each side "should take a flexible attitude."

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Associated Press Writers Anne Gearan in Washington and Henry Sanderson in Beijing contributed to this story.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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