29 December 2002
Powell: U.S., Allies Keeping Diplomatic Channels to North Korea Open
(Patience and pressure, not force, will resolve issue, secretary says)
(870)
By Howard Cincotta
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The United States will remain patient and consult
closely with friends and allies to resolve the challenge posed by
North Korea's violation of nuclear accords it had previously agreed to
abide by, says Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Secretary Powell, who made the rounds of five Sunday television news
shows on January 29, said that North Korea had created a serious
situation by expelling nuclear inspectors and restarting the Yongbyon
plutonium facility. But he added that the situation does not
constitute a crisis and stressed that the U.S. does not feel that
force is either necessary or appropriate at the present time.
"We are going to be patient," Powell said on CBS's Face the Nation.
"We are going to continue to apply pressure. We are going to consult
with our friends and allies and we are going to hope that common sense
will ultimately prevail. We are going to keep channels open in case
that there are messages coming from North Korea. We want to
communicate with North Korea and wait for an opening to solve this
diplomatically."
On ABC's This Week, Powell said: "We have to keep in mind the concerns
and interests of our allies in the region. The South Koreans are our
friends. We want to stay in touch with them. We want to consult with
them. We want to discuss with them the way forward. And that's the
same situation with the Japanese, the Russians, the Chinese, the
European Union, and the United Nations. This is the time for the
international community to come together."
North Korea's actions are serving only to isolate the regime further,
Powell noted, cutting off promising international initiatives to aid
the North Korean people and economy.
"It is a tragedy for the people of North Korea when the entire world
stands ready to help them," Powell said on NBC's Meet the Press. "The
Japanese, the South Koreans, others have come to their own conclusion
that until North Korea does something about this problem, it is hard
to make the case that they should assist North Korea with the kind of
assistance North Korea really needs."
Moreover, Powell noted in several interviews, the Chinese have said
clearly they want a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, most recently when
President Jiang Zemin met with President Bush at his ranch in
Crawford, Texas.
In every interview -- NBC's Meet the Press, CBS's Face the Nation,
ABC's This Week, CNN's Late Edition, and Fox News Sunday -- Powell
stressed that the United States has no hostile intent toward North
Korea. "Nobody's going to attack North Korea," Powell said on ABC's
This Week. "We have no plans to attack North Korea. We've said it
repeatedly. The President has said it repeatedly."
Secretary Powell pointed out that, previously, the United States had
been engaged in direct, diplomatic talks with North Korea. Powell
recalled his meeting with the North Korean foreign minister in Brunei
in July 2002.
"We had a pleasant conversation," Powell said on NBC. "I told him that
the United States wanted to engage with North Korea, we wanted to help
them, we wanted to help their people, but we had to deal with these
issues of proliferation and weapons of mass destruction."
Shortly thereafter, Powell said, Assistant Secretary James Kelly
presented North Korean authorities with evidence that they were
violating the Agreed Framework of 1994 to cap their nuclear program --
a violation that the North Koreans then publicly acknowledged. With
international attention focused on the Yongbyon plutonium facility,
Powell observed, "they were creating an enriched uranium capability
elsewhere in the country."
Now they have decided to kick out international nuclear inspectors
from Yongbyon, Powell said, and restart the reactor to produce more
plutonium. "So these are two acts of misbehavior on the part of the
North Korean regime," Powell said on CNN.
There must be no reward for such behavior, Powell warned, either by
the United States or the international community. "We have made it
clear to the North Koreans that there are ways to communicate," Powell
told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "But we will not enter a negotiation where
they sit there and say, 'What will you pay us for our misbehavior? How
will you appease our misbehavior this time?'"
Powell said that Assistant Secretary Kelly will be going to South
Korea shortly for consultations. The U.S. is also awaiting an official
report by the International Atomic Energy Agency on North Korea's
actions.
On Fox News Sunday, Powell said, "I am very pleased that the entire
international community has come together on this issue to say to
North Korea you're moving in the wrong direction, this is not the
right thing to do, and you'd be better off cooperating with the
international community to find a way forward to end this uranium
enrichment program that we have discovered, and also to put the
plutonium program at Yongbyon back under international supervision."
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)
