Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

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QUESTION:  Change of subject?   North Korea.  Do you have any response to President Kim Dae-jung's remarks today in which he said that isolating and putting pressure on North Korea was a bad idea, was futile, wouldn't work?  Do you agree with him?

MR. REEKER:  I would, first of all, point you to the remarks that the Secretary made yesterday when he was able to speak to all of you very broadly by going on a number of national TV shows that also get international play and talking largely about North Korea. 

Broadly in this subject, we share the view of the international community that North Korea's recent actions intended to advance its nuclear weapons capability and violating its International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards Agreement, these are a challenge to all responsible nations.  The entire international community has made clear that North Korea's relations with the outside world hinge on the elimination of its nuclear weapons program.  So we continue to call on North Korea to reverse its current course, to take all steps necessary to come into compliance with its IAEA Safeguards Agreement, and to eliminate the nuclear weapons program in a verifiable manner.

We continue to be in close touch with friends and allies in the region.  In addition to the calls that I've briefed you on previously that the Secretary has made over the weekend, he spoke to Australian Foreign Minister Downer, he also spoke a couple of times with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan,  he spoke the morning with British Foreign Secretary Straw.  And so I think we've seen statements from around the international community supporting this, making quite clear that North Korea is the country that has developed, is developing, nuclear weapons contrary to their commitments and that this is leading them into a very isolated position. 

They have put themselves in this position by violating very seriously these commitments and they have an opportunity to change course, come into compliance, give up the nuclear weapons program and pursue a much better relationship with the entire international community.  After all, a number of countries, including the United States, had indicated that we were prepared to pursue better relations to help the North Korean people.

QUESTION:  Can I follow up?  And what the kind of thinking here at State Department on a debate in the UN Security Council on North Korea?

MR. REEKER:  Well, I think, again pointing you to what the Secretary said yesterday -- and I'll just refer to my well-indexed transcript from the Secretary's various interviews -- one really can't answer the question specifically of what discussions or action might take place at the UN Security Council.  We are waiting to see what will happen in early January when the International Atomic Energy Agency meets in its Board of Governors session.  I believe that takes place on the 6th of January, next Monday.  And that Board of Governors of the IAEA will, in all likelihood, make a judgment in terms of what North Korea has done and then whether to bring it forward to the United Nations. 

So we will see what happens as that progresses and continue to be in contact with others in the international community.  We are not, as the Secretary said yesterday, not at the moment preparing to introduce a separate resolution. 

QUESTION:  Has there been any decision made about when Jim Kelly is going to head to Seoul?

MR. REEKER:  No, I don't think I can push that any further forward than the Secretary did yesterday.  Our Assistant Secretary for East Asia and Pacific Affairs James Kelly will be going to South Korea within the next week or two to consult with our friends and allies.  We have been doing that, of course, on the phone, whether through the Secretary or through our embassies.  We expect he'll travel in the next couple of weeks, but I just don't have a specific itinerary or schedule at this point.  I'll try to keep you posted.

Jim.

QUESTION:  Do you know generally which countries he'd be going to?

MR. REEKER:  Well, I think South Korea is a fairly obvious guess; Tokyo, where we regularly confer with those allies on North Korea policy, and certainly we've been in close touch with them through other channels and Assistant Secretary Kelly travels there on a fairly regular basis anyway.  But I just don't have --

QUESTION:  And Beijing, as well? 

MR. REEKER:  I just don't have a specific thing.  We certainly have been in touch with our Chinese counterparts.  The Secretary, as you know, spoke last week with Foreign Minister Tang.  Our embassies have been in touch and we have seen statements by the Chinese as well.  And as the Secretary said yesterday, we recall these important and strong statements made by President Jiang Zemin when he visited with President Bush in Crawford, where he said quite directly that China's policy was to have a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. 

So this is of concern to all the countries in the region, obviously, as well as to the United States and others in the international community. 

Yes.

QUESTION:  Phil, there was a great deal of surprise expressed when North Korea took the  measures of taking off the seals to the Yongbyon and reopening it, as if the agreement were already in place and that they were breaking it by the actions that they were taking.  However, it seems their sealing of Yongbyon was not done unconditionally.  There were a number of parts of the agreement that had to be fulfilled from the US and from the international side in order for that to go through.  That included normalizing diplomatic relations, ending trade sanctions against Pyongyang --

MR. REEKER:  Let me just stop you right there because you're just --

QUESTION:  -- making a pledge of nonagression --

MR. REEKER:  You're just off base and I would advise you to go back and read your history.  We can hook you up with our website and go back to our briefings from many years ago, administrations ago, in terms of the facts of that.

The IAEA Safeguards Agreement was an agreement that North Korea has with the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and they are in violation of that Safeguards Agreement.  We have called upon them, as the IAEA has, to sit down with IAEA and discuss how they can repair the damage that's been done to seals and cameras and other safeguards measures.

So we have also pursued a policy to approach North Korea, as the President said, to pursue a dialogue.  North Korea, instead, as we discovered and have talked about, pursued a separate nuclear weapons program, that is, with highly enriched uranium.  We presented this to them.  They told us at that time, when Assistant Secretary Kelly met with North Koreans in Pyongyang, that they considered the Agreed Framework nullified and have proceeded with these violations of the Safeguards Agreement, as well as other international agreements they have.

So North Korea has put themselves in this position.  North Korea can change course and get themselves out of this position.  They have the power to do that.  It's what will bring them benefits by working, engaging in a positive way, with the international community.  And we saw what countries like Japan were prepared to do, were talking about major economic support for North Korea; South Korea prepared and focused on much better relations; the United States, under President Bush's policy, prepared to pursue a bold dialogue aimed at having a better relationship with North Korea. 

So, really, North Korea needs to take the steps here and indicate that they are ready to reengage with IAEA, get back into compliance and to eliminate their nuclear weapons program.

Jonathan.

QUESTION:  There were some economic sanctions imposed by the United States on North Korea which were lifted in 1999.  Are you considering re-imposing those sanctions in light of what has happened over the last two or three months?

MR. REEKER:  I don't think anybody has suggested at this point imposing sanctions.  The Secretary has not asked any nation to take economic action against this desperately poor country, North Korea.  What we have talked about, and as the Secretary repeatedly indicated yesterday, is that the international community can continue to bring pressure on North Korea by telling them that they've put themselves in this position, they're in serious violation of their international commitments.  They're the ones who are developing nuclear weapons contrary to their commitments.  They've never said that they're willing to get back into compliance and to abandon their nuclear program. 

And so we have before us a diplomatic pathway that we're pursuing.  We want to pursue a peaceful resolution to this, as the Secretary said, and we have a lot of diplomatic tools at our disposal.  It's in North Korea's best interest to get back into compliance so that they can pursue a more positive arrangement and relationship with all countries, all parts of the international community, which will benefit their people. 

QUESTION:  Can I just follow up on that?  My understanding was that those sanctions were purely symbolic in the sense that they affected things like investments and private commercial transactions which hardly applied in the case of North Korea, so re-imposing them would also be purely symbolic.  Can you -- are you absolutely confident there is no consideration of it, given that it wouldn't, in fact, affect the welfare of the --

MR. REEKER:  At this point, nobody has talked about sanctions.  It's not something I heard in the Secretary's discourse yesterday.  I don't want to rule anything in or out.  The President has all his options at his disposal. 

But I think, to just point you back to what the Secretary said, that's what we're focused on.  And in terms of some of these specific sanctions in terms of proliferation, other things, we could do a check for you of what may remain on the books and what was lifted.  I'd want to go back and do a complete sort of history of that. 

George.

QUESTION:  Two questions.  You mentioned the Board of Governors of the IAEA.  And they will make a judgment about whether to, what, recommend something to the Security Council or issue a report of the Security Council?  How do those two interact?

MR. REEKER:  I'd really let you ask the IAEA that.  I note that my colleague there has been quite available to the press.  I'm not an expert on the IAEA or its setup.  It is a body that reports to the United Nations and is constituted under the United Nations mandate. 

So that Board of Governors will meet. They've already -- the IAEA itself, its Director, Dr. El Baredei, has made certain statements, has called upon North Korea to immediately discuss coming back into compliance, what steps can be taken to reverse course to correct the damage that they've done to the monitoring situation. 

So when the Board of Governors meets, they will clearly assess the whole situation there and then make their own determination as to how they report to the United Nations and what steps, then go from there.

QUESTION:  (Inaudible.)

MR. REEKER:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  If I can think of it.

MR. REEKER:  We can always come back.

Three seconds.  Any time, George, just put your hand up.

QUESTION:  We'll come back.

QUESTION:  Maybe I missed it in your answer to the initial question which started off the North Korea round here, which was Jonathan's question about whether you guys had any reaction to President Kim's somewhat negative view of the tack that you're taking with this.  Did you have any specific reaction to that rather than --

MR. REEKER:  In fact, if you look at all of President Kim's statements, and you look at some of the things that he seemed to be responding to, I think we have to be careful of responding to newspaper reports or certain press accounts versus looking at what the Secretary said in a very comprehensive layout of our North Korea policy. 

And I would also note that President Kim Dae-jung talked about the fact that we, the South Koreans, in his case, "will work closely with our allies to solve the peninsula's problems, to firmly oppose North Korea's nuclear arms program and to pursue a peaceful solution."  And that sounds remarkably like what I said just now from here and what the Secretary said yesterday.  I think there is strong agreement in the international community that North Korea has gotten themselves into this problem and has the opportunity to get themselves out.  This is of great concern to the neighboring countries, of course South Korea.  That is why we consult so closely with them and why we're working with the international community to approach this situation.

QUESTION:  Well, you're right.  There is strong agreement among the international community that there is a problem here, but there seem to be differences in the way you go about dealing with the problem.  And so I'm just -- you, in other words, do not see any great rift between Washington and Seoul right now?

MR. REEKER:  Not at all.  Neither with the current president nor with the president-elect, who has also made statements as South Korea prepares to go through its own democratic transition there. 

We can do this gentleman and then this gentleman -- oh wait.  We'll take George because he gets --

QUESTION:  I was reading this morning that North Korea simply wants to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  I was unaware of that.  Maybe the Secretary addressed that, too.  If he hadn't, or didn't, do you have a response?

MR. REEKER:  I don't know that that came up specifically.  Recall that North Korea began taking steps some years ago to withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty and then froze the clock in that process, I believe.  Let me go back and check the specific history of that.  They have Nonproliferation Treaty related safeguards obligations that certainly go beyond the Agreed Framework with the United States, and expelling the IAEA inspectors does raise serious questions about their intentions.  And as Dr. El Baradei, the IAEA Director, said, it certainly belies North Korea's statements that they are restarting the operations at Yongbyon to produce electricity.

So, you know, I haven't see that specifically, that step specifically happened.  I've seen some mention of it in the press.  North Korea has to live up to its international commitments.  That's the first and most important step in terms of engaging more broadly with the international community, including the United States.

Now, we were going to go to this gentleman and then that gentleman, and then that lady.

QUESTION:  Yes, I want to go on a tangent, if I may.  Does the North Korea case have any ramifications for the current US policy on Iraq?

MR. REEKER:  I don't think so.  They are two different cases.  The Secretary was asked this a couple of times yesterday.  They are very different situations, and the diplomacy and the methods of dealing with different situations are, by that very nature, different.  So I don't -- I fail to see any implication there other than --

QUESTION:  And in terms of resorting to the Security Council as an avenue for dealing with the North Korea case, members of the Security Council who are against using force against Iraq will argue, and have argued, indeed, like the Russians and the French, that that is the way to deal with both cases -- at the Security Council.

MR. REEKER:  Well, again, I don't -- I guess I don't understand what your question is.  We are dealing with this diplomatically with both cases, diplomatically through the use of international organizations, through the structures that we have in place, these multilateral structures.  That's what we're doing.  The IAEA, perhaps the United Nations, which will have interest in this.  Clearly, the UN will be interested in this.  As I said to your colleague, the IAEA is a UN agency. 

So both situations are one where we've gone to the international community as a whole, worked with friends and allies to focus on how to deal with problems that are presented by, in these cases, two different nations.  But each case has a different context.  Each case involves different histories, different players, and you can't just take a cookie-cutter approach to the diplomacy or the how to deal with them.  And the Secretary went through that in several of the interviews he did yesterday.

Let me just go over here and come back around.

QUESTION:  Since the North seems to have indicated that their current posture, in part, is a defensive response to having been included in the "axis of evil," has there been any consideration of amending that list or --

MR. REEKER:  Let me just remind you, as the Secretary did numerous times yesterday, they were motivated some four or five years ago to start this highly enriched uranium program in pursuit of nuclear weapons.  While the world was focusing on the Agreed Framework, which shut down the Yongbyon reactor and eliminated the plutonium program, nuclear weapons program using plutonium, the North decided some four or five years ago to pursue this other program.

The President's State of the Union address was 11 months ago, in January of this year, where he talked about the "axis of evil."  And I think, as the Secretary pointed out, it's worth saying the actions that have taken place since that time, the characterizations that the President made have been vindicated by the facts that have subsequently come out.

Now, the lady next to you was next.

QUESTION:  -- veer off a little bit.  This is not North Korea.

MR. REEKER:  Oops.  We better not veer too far.

QUESTION:  Wait a second.  Can I just make -- I just wonder, when you talked about the President's axis -- his State of the Union address being vindicated by subsequent events, I am correct in thinking that you guys did not have evidence that they had restarted their uranium -- this production program at the time of that speech, right?  That is correct?

MR. REEKER:  I think we've said that that intelligence came to light during the summer.  That's right.

QUESTION:  Okay.  So, then this is not the -- I mean, there were other things that led the President to call them an "axis of evil," part of the "axis of evil" in that speech.

MR. REEKER:  Right.  And we've been over that plenty of times.

QUESTION:  Yeah.  Well, I don't want you to go through that.  I just wanted to make sure.

MR. REEKER:  Now, we had more on North Korea?

QUESTION:  Concerning Iraq again --

MR. REEKER:  Does this have to do with North Korea?

QUESTION:  Some of it.

MR. REEKER:  Mezzo-mezzo.  (Laughter.)  All right, Aliyev*.  I will give you the benefit of the doubt.

QUESTION:  You have a softer stance with North Korea and we think you have a tough one with Iraq.  Then the United States announced several times that it had evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destructions, and the inspectors' chief asked several times the US to reveal this evidence.  Why do not the administration reveal this?

MR. REEKER:  We are giving intelligence to the inspection team.  The Secretary talked about that yesterday.  In fact, we talked some time ago following the Iraqi declaration that we found certainly insufficient, that we would begin providing additional intelligence to the inspectors and that is taking place.  That is happening, and the Secretary said that yesterday.  I'm not going to go into details about that intelligence.  I think UNMOVIC, Dr. Blix's organization, has put into place ways to protect intelligence sources and methods and that's enabled us to obviously work with them and other countries, as well, in sharing that intelligence. 

We have also provided a significant amount of information publicly over a long period of time, as have the British and others, and we are always considering when we're in a position to provide more information.  But we are providing intelligence to the inspectors and supporting them, as we promised to do, in every way we can.

Okay.  One more on -- all right, we're shifting to Iraq now.  Is that all right?  North Korea I really wanted to try to -- okay, sir.  Please.

QUESTION:  How do you intercept North Korean shipments of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles at high sea?  What kind of coordination or cooperation do you expect with South Korean or Japanese counterparts?

MR. REEKER:  I think that's a little premature at this point.  That's an option that we have --

QUESTION:  It takes same type of effort like you did with Spanish navy?

MR. REEKER:  Again, I think it would be premature to try to comment on that.  It's an option that we have that's been discussed.  No decisions of that nature have been taken.  Our focus is on the message.  Our focus is on the message that we're making to North Korea, that they have an opportunity to change their course, to come into compliance, to signal to the international community that they want to keep their commitments and have the opportunity to pursue the dialogue and other improvements in relations that we've talked about. 

So there are many options before the President and also before the international community as a whole.  I wouldn't want to try to deal with hypothetical situations at this point on that.

Last one on Korea?

QUESTION:  Phil, could you say exactly when does the United States think that this enriched uranium program by the North Koreans began?  When do we have indication that they were working on that?

MR. REEKER:  I think we talked about the determinations the intelligence community was able to make over the summer.  I don't think I have anything more specific.

QUESTION:  (Inaudible.)

MR. REEKER:  When it began?

QUESTION:  Yeah, when do you think that they started?

MR. REEKER:  Oh, that was when we determined that.  I think we've talked about four or five years ago. 

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