US DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING
JUNE 17, 1994
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING
I N D E X
Friday, June 17, 1994
Briefers: Robert Gallucci
Christine Shelly
NORTH KOREA
President Carter's Discussions with Kim Il-song . 1-5,10-11
-- Statement of US Position .................... 1-5,10-11
US Conditions for Third Round of Talks .......... 1-2,5,10
US Briefing of President Carter before Visit .... 5
Sanctions/UN Discussions ........................ 5-6
Military Options ................................ 6,9-10
Defueling of Reactor ............................ 6
US Contacts ..................................... 6-8
Prospects of Nuclear/Chemical Weapons ........... 8-9
..............
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING
DPC #94
FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 1994, 2:21 P.M.
(ON THE RECORD UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED)
MS. SHELLY: Good afternoon, ladies and
gentlemen. I'm pleased to see so many of you
attending our briefing today. We are beginning a
bit late in order to accommodate the schedule of
our star attraction today, Mr. Robert Gallucci, the
Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs,
and also, as you know, the Chair of the
Administration's senior policy steering group on
Korea. He'll start the briefing and I will take
questions on other subjects at the end.
Bob, it's all yours.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I think I'll
spare you an opening statement and stand for
questions.
Q Could you interpret for us the remarks
of former President Carter aboard President Kim's
ship?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: No, I don't
think I could interpret them. I've heard them
reported. I'm not exactly clear on what the
message is. I'm not exactly clear on either one
about what's been said and what we are supposed to
understand.
I think the best way for me to respond to that
is ask what you understand that he said and then I
could respond to that rather than me trying to
interpret what he said.
Q Has there been a misunderstanding
between President Carter and the Administration
about the Administration's conditions for going to
a third round of talks?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I guess I
would say I don't know whether there is or not.
Certainly, there is no ambiguity, I think, in
the statement we made yesterday that I read.
That statement has not changed. I don't think
it's an ambiguous statement. We said that if
the North Koreans mean to convey that they are
prepared to defer reprocessing, defer refueling
the reactor and maintain the continuity of
safeguards, then we would be prepared to go to a
third round.
What I can't speak to is what sort of
transpired between the former President and
President Kim Il-song. So I don't know whether
there is a misunderstanding. I would say
there's certainly no question about what we said
yesterday. That I can speak to, definitively.
But I can't speak to what they said or what they
understand.
Q What have you been able to determine
in the last 18 or 20 hours about what North
Korea's intentions or lack of intentions are?
That was the big question yesterday. Have you
made any progress in trying to nail them down?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: We've made a
determination or a decision that we would wait
until we got a readout from President Carter
after he had left North Korea so that we would
have all the information we could have before us
before we followed up, as we said we would
yesterday, in a diplomatic channel with North
Korea. So I anticipate that could be as early
as Monday or Tuesday, assuming that we have good
conversations, clear conversations, with
President Carter tomorrow or Sunday.
Q So you've had no additional
communication with the North Koreans through any
of the channels to verify aspects of what
President Carter allegedly heard?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: That's
correct, although there's certainly a tone in
your voice of incredulity of that. I don't mind
the incredulity if you're simply surprised, and
I don't have to wonder at the surprise. If you
are surprised as to "how incompetent can they
get," then I am concerned about it because I
really think the prudent thing to do is for us
to get a readout from President Carter before we
go back to the North Koreans.
Any number of people have pointed out that
there can be communications problems between
anyone in North Korea. I think getting as close
to a full readout before we proceed is really a
prudent thing.
Carol.
Q Where is Carter going after he leaves
Pyongyang? And do you intend to talk to him in
person or by telephone?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I may not be
as definitive on this point as I'd like to be.
Certainly, he's going to Seoul when he leaves
Pyongyang. Where he goes from Seoul -- he comes
back to the United States, I'm not exactly sure
what his itinerary is.
I know the President will talk to him. I
don't know what plans there are. I guess I'd
have to direct you to the White House about
what's the modality of the conversation. I
simply don't know.
Q But in setting out your scenario as
to when you might be able to sort of evaluate
Pyongyang's proposals, you'll do that by talking
to him by telephone and then have some sort of
decision on Monday?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: Carol, I
don't know how the conversations will proceed.
I have high confidence that since the President
said yesterday he was going to talk to President
Carter after President Carter left Pyongyang, I
know that will happen. I don't know exactly
when it will happen. I know it will happen
soon. I'm virtually certain it will happen over
the weekend. Somebody certainly will be talking
to President Carter over the weekend. I assume
thereafter, as that conversation is completed,
then we think we have a good, clear appreciation
for the message that he carries, then we will
ourselves follow up just as quickly as we
possibly can. I anticipate that will be Monday
or Tuesday.
Q Was President Carter authorized to
make concessions to the North Koreans on behalf
of the United States such as we would call off
the dogs at the U.N. if (inaudible)
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: You recall
that President Carter went in a private
capacity. You recall he was invited by Kim Il-
song. You also recall, I know, that we briefed
President Carter.
President Carter's own statements and our
statements have repeatedly emphasized that it
was a private visit. In the course of saying
that, everybody is aware this is a former
President of the United States and with that
standing, if the North Koreans decided to convey
a message to him, we certainly are going to
listen to that message very carefully and
evaluate it.
President Carter carried no message from
us, no message from the President to convey --
either concessions nor threats; no message. So
I hope that is a clear answer to that question.
Q Have there been any consultations
with President Carter since he has been there?
In other words, he made one statement the day
before yesterday -- or yesterday, rather. Then
he comes around and he says something
indicating, at least, that he's had some sort of
consultations or some sort of discussions, or
whatever. Has anybody from the Administration
been in contact with him?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: Before
President Carter spoke in this context, which
I'm not fully whiting about -- whatever exactly
that context is -- and immediately before, in
fact, I read the statement that I did yesterday
-- the Administration's position yesterday -- we
talked to former President Carter on the
telephone so that he would know what it is we
were saying with regard to the message that he
had passed to us earlier in the day.
After that I, myself, am unaware of any
other contacts he had with any member of the
Administration.
Q It must have been a phone connection,
I guess. I'm sort of curious to know how he got
so badly wrong the message that you read out
yesterday; if you have any theory about that.
I'm also wondering sort of who briefed him
before he left, and how many people briefed him,
at least, on the State Department side and for
how long and how he seemed to misunderstand what
you said this morning was still our position and
what you said yesterday our position was?
And then, secondly, the South Koreans have
said today, according to wire accounts, anyway -
-
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: You're
asking me to keep a lot in my head.
Q This will be short.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: Okay, it's
your problem.
Q That high-level talks -- as a
condition for high-level talks, we are insisting
that North Korea go back into the IAEA. I'm
wondering if that's correct? Or was there a bad
phone conversation there, too?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I'm not
aware of a bad phone conversation. I myself do
not believe I can say that I have an
authoritative account of what President Carter
has said until I hear it from President Carter
outside of North Korea. Then, I think I will
have to say it's an authoritative position of
the former President about what he understands
to be true or what he said to Kim Il-song. I
really want to wait for that.
This is kind of an extended version of sort
of a maximum of operational affairs. When
you're in government or other large
organizations, first reports are always wrong.
What I want to do is just wait until we can find
out exactly what he said.
Probably the question, as you put it, would
have to best be put to President Carter. I
don't believe what we said yesterday was
ambiguous. I'm not sure that I know what
President Carter has said. So I really can't,
on that point, go any further.
With respect to the briefing of President
Carter, I was involved in that but so were a lot
of other experts. What we wanted to do was to
make sure that, as a former President of the
United States, he was aware of the issues
involved, at least, as the Administration
understands them.
As you know, President Carter is extremely
active and was well aware of many of the issues,
had a good base of knowledge. Some of the
details of the discussions, perhaps, we were
able to fill in for him, but we think we
provided him a good briefing. I don't think I
want to go into how many people, how many hours.
I do want to say that we did our best to
provide a good briefing for him. Questions
about how good, I think are best addressed to
him rather than those of us who are responsible
for providing the briefing.
There was a third question. The third
question had to do with whether or not there was
a condition for a third round that related to
the North Korean membership in the International
Atomic Energy Agency. No, that is not correct.
Q Could you lay out for us what is
happening on the sanctions front while you're
waiting to hear from former President Carter?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: What I
understand is happening -- and I haven't talked
to Ambassador Albright today -- but what I
understand is happening is that she is
consulting now with the non-permanent members of
the Security Council. I don't mean to the
exclusion of the permanent members, but the
circle has widened so that those discussions
about the substance of the resolution can
proceed.
I remind you, please, that we anticipate
that those discussions are going to go on for
some time, and we anticipated many states would
have their own views about what ought to be in
such a resolution, so there's nothing at all
unusual about that.
Q There was a reference in your
briefing yesterday to both the President and his
advisers discussing recommendations from the
Pentagon for possible military options, I
believe, or perhaps it was in a President's
statement. But at any rate what is the state of
that and does that go on hold as well until
after you and President Carter have talked after
he leaves Pyongyang?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I'm pretty
sure I didn't talk about possible military
options yesterday, and I can't exclude that the
President didn't make reference to a review
which goes on virtually every day of the
security situation in South Korea, and the
President wanting to be sure that he is aware of
the requirements that General Luck has conveyed
through General Shalikashvili and Secretary of
Defense Perry. And certainly the military
situation was discussed, and beyond that I just
cannot go.
Q Can I follow up on the sanctions
question? Various State Department officials, I
think including you, have said that the degree
and kind and timing of the sanctions will depend
largely on North Korean behavior.
Is there a de facto slowing down of the
actual consultation process now while this
government waits to see whether the North
Koreans are sincere, are acting in good will?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: The first
part of the question is about the relationship
of North Korean behavior to the sanctions
resolution. The structure of the resolution is
such that it is in two phases, and after the
first phase of sanctions become operative, the
second phase would be triggered by specific acts
the North might take which would further
jeopardize peace and security in Asia. The
objective here clearly is to deter the North
Koreans from causing the situation to further
deteriorate. That's the sense or the way in
which these two things are linked.
The answer to the second part is no,
they're not linked in such a way so that our
consultations are in any way affected as a
result of yesterday's events. Consultations are
proceeding.
Q Can you tell us the status of -- as
far as you understand it of the defueling of the
reactor at this point? Are they completed with
that?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I think I'm
going to have to say I think they have completed
defueling and they are cleaning up around the
reactor area. Let me look over at one of my
experts.
(TO STAFF) Is that correct? They have.
What they are doing now, we understand, is the
normal cleanup when one has a defueling
operation of a reactor and it is proceeding but
the fuel is all out of the reactor and in the
pond.
Q Two questions. Thank you, Ambassador
Gallucci. The first question has to do with Mr.
Selig Harrison and Donald Gregg, who were on the
MacNeil/Lehrer report on Monday, and a reported
-- somewhat what Mr. Carter has been reporting,
some very optimistic news from Kim Il-sung.
Have you had occasion to speak with either of
those gentlemen, and do you think there's a
correspondence here between what Mr. Carter has
garnered?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I have
spoken to both in the past, if you mean
subsequent to Sig's return from North Korea.
No, I was to see him at lunch, I thought, today,
but he had a media obligation and missed lunch.
I was at Carnegie for the lunch, so I missed
him, and I was looking forward in fact to
talking to him and asking him, I think, the
kinds of questions you'd expect I'd want to.
I've made it a point to try and speak to
people who have been in North Korea and to get
as much insight, not only from official sources
but also from unofficial sources.
Q But I had another question.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: Okay, go
ahead.
Q Thank you. This is for Mr. Lee who
couldn't be here today. The working group --
Mr. Christopher said last night on
MacNeil/Lehrer that the working group would
initiate within 48 hours in New York. Do you
know if indeed have they made arrangements, have
they met, are they going to meet? When and
where? This is the North Korean-U.S. working
group, I believe.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: You're going
to have to help me a little more here.
Q Can anybody else help me?
Q Working level.
Q He said that you would be making a
contact with the person that -- with whom you
spoke in July. At least that was my impression.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: Let me tell
you what I anticipate will happen, and I can't
speak to what the Secretary said, but you can be
sure after this briefing I'll go find out, and
then I'm sure we'll get on with doing it.
But what I anticipated we would do is, as I
said, wait for the former President to come
back, talk to him and then immediately get into
a diplomatic channel. And while I can't say
that we have definitively decided the mode, I
would anticipate that given the New York channel
has been used in the past and is available to
us, that we would use that channel to try to
follow up on the message that we received from
the North Koreans.
Q But just to clarify, not at your
level but at the level that's been pursued in
the past?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: So that
there's no ambiguity about this, or less
ambiguity anyway, that channel is used to pass
messages almost of all kinds, and I have in the
past communicated by letter with Vice Foreign
Minister Kang and he has written to me. But not
all communications are letters from me to Kang,
so we haven't decided on, as we love to say in
diplomatic circles, the modality here just yet.
Q Bob, given the fact that you've been
dealing with the North Koreans off and on for
the last year or so, did the events in the last
few days in North Korea between President Carter
and the North Koreans surprise you, not surprise
you? Can you characterize your reaction to it?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I'm getting
harder and harder to surprise, I think, as time
goes by. I guess at one level I am not
surprised that the North Koreans took the
opportunity of the visit of a former President
of the United States to -- I guess the right
words are "send a message." What we don't know,
really, is the meaning of that message, and
particularly what we don't know is whether the
message they intend to send is really one in
which one can see a desire, in fact, to re-
establish a dialogue; but that something came
out of this, that a meeting between Kim Il-sung
and President Carter came out of it, no, of
course, we're not surprised by that.
Q I'd like to ask for an update. What
is your latest estimate on how many nuclear
bombs the North Koreans might have, if any, and
do you have any statistics you can give to us on
the number that perhaps has been exported, or
any nuclear material exported by them or
biological material, chemical material, over the
past year?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: What we know
about the North Korean nuclear program is that
there's a very good chance that the North
Koreans have separated more plutonium than they
have declared, and they may have separated
enough material for one or possibly two nuclear
weapons. It is possible that they have not only
separated that plutonium, but then went on to
fabricate the implosion system and make nuclear
devices or nuclear weapons. We don't know that
that that's happened. It is possible that it's
happened.
We -- or at least I should be more careful
-- I at least am unaware of any cooperation
between North Korea and any other country in the
nuclear area of any kind, never mind any
significant kind.
Q (Inaudible)
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: Of any kind.
Let me back up just slightly and say I'm
excluding, of course, the research reactor and
associated facilities supplied by Russia a long
time ago, then the Soviet Union. But I am
unaware of anything in anything like the recent
past certainly being exported. But let me take
the opportunity of that question to say that
what we are aware of is North Korean cooperation
with other countries in the area of ballistic
missiles, and that is a real concern to us and
something we would like to see stopped.
Q What about chemical and biological?
There's been talk about that, too.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I am unaware
of any cooperation between North Korea and other
countries in the chemical or biological area.
In saying that, I don't mean to exclude the
possibility. It is possible that it's happened.
It's a possibility from the fact that we have
known about it and even spoken to it on the
record. It's just simply at this moment I am
unaware of it.
Q Mr. Gallucci, three senior members of
the Bush Administration have now in editorial
comments urged the Administration to basically
bomb the reprocessing plant in North Korea. I
was wondering if you could tell us what you see
as the down side of that policy option?
(Laughter)
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I served in
the Bush Administration with those individuals,
actually in my current capacity. One could say
that there was the opportunity to do it then,
too, if one regards that as an opportunity.
What I would say about this is that -- let me
just be very careful here -- this Administration
has said that it is not ruling in or ruling out
any option for the future.
Our policy, however, has been clear, and
that is that we are seeking to resolve the
nuclear issue through negotiations in the first
instance. If we cannot directly do that, then
we are going to proceed to sanctions. We would
hope those sanctions would convince North Korea
to come into compliance with its treaty
obligations or move them back to the table to
talk about that. That's the policy. It doesn't
exclude other possibilities in the future.
Since you ask about the possible down side,
as you put it, of military strikes, it is
certainly quite possible that a military
confrontation of any kind -- never mind a strike
-- could escalate, and that that escalation
could lead to a general war on the Korean
peninsula. And we have gone to a great deal of
trouble to try to deter war on the Korean
peninsula by not only the deployment of our
troops and equipment but also the South Koreans
have gone to a great deal of trouble to have
their forces ready and equipped to deter a
conflict.
And then moreover, we have gone to a great
deal of trouble to have both our forces in a
position to defend South Korea, should a
conflict erupt. That said, I don't know any
analyst who looks at the Korean situation and
could see anything other than a situation if a
war were to erupt in which there would be many,
many casualties. And while I may be belaboring
the obvious here, if one were looking at the
down side of doing something like that, it is
undoubtedly the first one that should come to
mind -- the potential cost in human life.
Q Bob, as a political matter, if North
Korea meets your conditions for a third round,
will you suspend consultations in New York on
sanctions?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I think that
we said yesterday that if we do go to a third
round, if the bases for a third round is re-
established, then, of course, we would, in New
York, suspend the activity and not be actively
consulting on the sanctions resolution.
The sanctions resolution would always be a
possibility if such discussions did not produce
results, but of course we'd do that.
Q Did you make that clear to President
Carter yesterday?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: I would like
to say obviously yes, but I'm afraid I can't
remember everything that was said yesterday. I
really don't recall. I'm sorry.
Q Did the Administration in anyway,
regardless of what was said to President Carter,
give him the authority to make a statement about
the United States' position on sanctions?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: Again,
President Carter is on a private visit. We
don't give him the authority to make statements,
and it's just not the nature of the
relationship.
MS. SHELLY: Last question.
Q Has President Carter's mission been
helpful to the Administration?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY GALLUCCI: What I think
I can say clearly about this is that we welcome
President Carter's effort. It was an effort
aimed at peace. We applaud that effort.
Whether in substance he has come out with a
message on which we can build, all we can say is
we hope so. We'll look at it very closely, and,
if it is something on which we can build, we'll
try to build.
Thank you.
MS. SHELLY: Thank you very much.
(Asst Secretary Gallucci's briefing
concluded at 2:45 p.m.)
Q Filing break?
MS SHELLY: I don't know. What do you guys
think? You're going anyway? (Laughter)
..............
(Press briefing concluded 2:55 p.m.)
(###)
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