FOX SPECIAL REPORT WITH BRIT HUME Fox News Network - November 11, 2002
The Political Grapevine
HUME: Assistant Secretary of State Jim Kelley is in South Korea where he has been unsuccessful in getting Seoul and Tokyo to join the U.S. in a tough approach with regards to North Korea, after its acknowledgment of a nuclear weapons program. The allies prefer to wait for another meeting this Thursday in New York, where European officials will join them in deciding what to do about a shipment of fuel oil nearing North Korea. Keeping up one side of a bargain that North Korea has broken. FOX NEWS' Teri Schultz reports.
TERI SCHULTZ, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Kim Jong Il (ph) has the U.S. perplexed. The North Korean leader's now open pursuit of enriched uranium for use in a nuclear weapons program blatantly violates a 1994 agreement with the United States, forcing President Bush to suddenly come up with a response to weapons of mass destruction in North Korea, at a time when he is ready to wage war on Iraq for the same thing. But Pyongyang won't get the same treatment for now.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're going to work with countries in the neighborhood to convince North Korea that it is not in the world's interests that they develop a nuclear weapon.
SCHULTZ: Assistant Secretary of State Jim Kelley, the man to whom North Korean officials confessed in October, is in the region now talking to those neighbors. But a weekend meeting Kelly held with South Korea and Japan produced only a statement criticizing North Korea, not promising isolation of it, as the U.S. wants.
Though the U.S. may know what it wants from allies in the region, it doesn't quite have its own policy quite lined up yet. Right now, a ship filled of oil is days away from a North Korean port. That's oil paid for by the U.S. in exchange for North Korea's promise to end its nuclear program. With that pledge now clearly broken, will the U.S. turn the ship around? No decision's been made.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: North Korea should understand that it's not going to be business as usual, as we move forward here. But we'll look at the specifics with the people who are involved in this decision.
SCHULTZ: Disagreement within the administration on whether to respond to North Korea's breach with negotiation or with threats is exacerbated by the lack of knowledge about Kim Jong Il's plans.
JOHN WOLFSTHAL, NONPROFLIFERATION ANALYST: It is possible, although not guaranteed, that the north is interested in opening up and engaging. And we should test that premise because if they are, it's in our long-term security interests. At the same time, we need to be prepared in case they're not.
SCHULTZ: That means keeping the military option in a back pocket, as the U.S. has for decades with 37,000 American soldiers in South Korea. But with the administration's current adamants on no negotiations and Kim Jong Il's (ph) infamous erratic escalations.
JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: I think the administration is not going to give into those provocations, and we are, I'm afraid, in a period in which both sides are going to be prepared to risk war.
SCHULTZ: So far, the president has clearly decided one thing -- not to pursue the kind of aggressive stance seen in the case of Iraq. But if more decision making isn't done this week, the oil ship will dock, and Kim Jong Il (ph) will reap by default the benefits of a deal he declared by word, indeed, nullified.
In Washington, Teri Schultz, FOX NEWS.
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