Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=04/28/03

TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP

TITLE=NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR REVELATION

NUMBER=6-12908

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: U-S Secretary of State Colin Powell says the Bush administration has offered North Korea a plan to resolve the standoff over its nuclear development program. Secretary Powell says the plan was offered last week in Beijing during talks with U-S, North Korean and Chinese diplomats. It was at those meetings that the North Koreans formally announced what the U-S and the world had known for some time, that Pyongyang possesses nuclear weapons.

Now the U-S press is reacting to the news and suggesting that North Korea may be emerging as a greater global security threat than Saddam Hussein ever was. We get a sampling now from V-O-A's ________________________ in today's U-S Opinion Roundup.

TEXT: As regards the latest U-S move to resolve the differences over North Korea's nuclear resurgence, South Korean media are reporting that North Korea wants a package deal that would offer the dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal in exchange for normalized ties with Washington. Secretary Powell is said to be studying the North Korean proposals. Meanwhile, at an inter-Korean ministerial meeting Monday [4-28], South Korea demanded that the North abandon its nuclear weapons program, but the North Korean delegates refused to discuss the matter.

In the United States press there is no reluctance to discuss the issue, as evidenced by this Wall Street Journal editorial excerpt.

VOICE: North Korea used its long-sought talk with the U-S last week to boast that it already has nuclear weapons, as well as 8-thousand reprocessed spent-fuel rods to make more bombs to "transfer" overseas. In other words, the meeting didn't go well. This shouldn't have surprised anyone, except those who still believe that arms control works with a dictatorship determined to break its promises.

When the Clinton administration struck its Agreed Framework in 1994, Pyongyang had one nuclear-weapons program. Now the North has two. If the U-S does what the arms controllers inside the State Department want and agrees to pay North Korea again in return for yet more promises, will we get a third? Maybe it's time to try something else.

TEXT: Views of The Wall Street Journal. In Ohio, meanwhile, The Cincinnati Post greets the news with a personal comparison.

VOICE: North Korea is like the lunatic locked in the attic, kicking the door and screaming blood-curdling threats and demands. It belligerently demanded a one-on-one meeting with the United States, and when that didn't work, it grudgingly settled for a multilateral meeting in Beijing with Russian and Chinese representative present - - where it was ready with a new threat. . The United States should insist that China, Russia, Japan and South Korea play a direct and active role in the talks and for a simple reason: The lunatic is in their attic, not ours.

TEXT: Colorado's Rocky Mountain News in Denver takes a hard line similar to that of The Wall Street Journal.

VOICE: If there were any doubts before, there should be fewer now that North Korea has replaced Iraq as the world's craziest rogue state. For weeks, Pyongyang had bellicosely demanded face-to-face talks with Washington. Cowed by the U-S's successful invasion of Iraq, it suddenly announced it wanted "multilateral" discussions about its nuclear weapons plans. The talks began last week . with Russian and Chinese representatives present.

True to form, North Korean negotiators raised the ante, saying the communist state possesses nuclear weapons. They threatened to export them or conduct a "physical demonstration," but then hinted they might be willing to give them up. Apocalyptic threats from Pyongyang are nothing new, and President Bush accurately characterized this latest one as blackmail. The United States has sensibly stuck to its demand that a precondition for any deal . is that Pyongyang must dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

TEXT: Portions of a Rocky Mountain News editorial. Lastly, back in Ohio, a worried Dayton Daily News is hoping that China will continue to take an active role because:

VOICE: .taken at face value, the [North Korean] declarations change everything. .The [U-S] administration has always thought the North Koreans have had one or two nuclear explosives for more than a decade. But Washington has not known about more. Meanwhile, there are doubts that the North Koreans can make their explosives small enough to fit on their missiles.

. North Korea is being threatening in a way that Iraq never was in the run-up to war. But the Bush administration almost certainly does not want a war there and would prefer to avoid even surgical strikes at nuclear facilities. From all indications, there is still time to pursue diplomatic solutions and / or economic actions that might get the attention of the North Korean government. But the forces of sanity are going to need some help.

TEXT: On that note from The Dayton [Ohio] Daily News, we conclude this sampling of comment on the latest developments in North Korea's nuclear resurgence.

NEB/ANG