United States Urges North Korea To Return to Six-Party Talks
04 May 2005
State's DeTrani cites U.S. multilateral, bilateral overtures to Pyongyang
By Todd Bullock
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- North Korea's neighbors and the United States have offered multilateral security assurances and economic incentives to the government in Pyongyang in exchange for comprehensive and verifiable removal of it nuclear program, according to Joseph DeTrani, the United States' special envoy to the Six-Party Talks.
The United States has considered providing energy assistance, retraining for engineers involved in nuclear programs and a major infrastructure initiative to get North Korea's economy moving, DeTrani said May 3 at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He participated in a discussion entitled "North Korea and the Bomb: How Real A Threat?"
DeTrani urged North Korea to return to the Six-Party Talks, which stalled after the completion of a third round of talks in June 2004 when Pyongyang refused to continue participation. The other nations involved in the Six-Party Talks are China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
The ambassador said the United States was disappointed in North Korea's refusal to return to the talks after the June 2004 round because momentum had been generated to move toward an exchange of multilateral security assurances for verifiable elimination of North Korea's plutonium and clandestine uranium enrichment programs.
DeTrani rejected North Korea's claim that the United States is pursuing a hostile policy and cited repeated attempts at bilateral contacts with North Korea through working groups.
"[North Korea] wants security assurances, and that is why we are talking about multilateral security assurances as well as compensation for giving up their nuclear capability," he said. "We would like to move in that direction, as well as moving towards normalization [of relations]."
Once a normal state-to-state relationship is resumed between the United States and North Korea, DeTrani said, there are many other issues to be discussed, including human rights, ballistic missiles and illicit activities such as narcotics trafficking and counterfeiting U.S. currency.
"We have no preconditions and are hoping they come back to the table," DeTrani said.
The ambassador praised China as "a very constructive player" in the Six-Party Talks.
"China has a very unique relationship with the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's formal name] and it is in their interest and in everyone's for the DPRK to come back to the negotiation table," he said. "We continue to ask China to do even more."
DeTrani said that North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan recently told U.S. scholar Harrison Selig that North Korea has the ability to hand over fissile material to terrorists, and cannot promise that it will not do so if "the United States drives us into a corner."
This "nightmare scenario" is bringing other concerned nations together, DeTrani said. Some 60 nations taking part in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) are focused on preventing the North Korean government from transferring such materials to terrorists.
The PSI, an initiative of President Bush launched in May 2003, is intended to enhance and expand efforts to prevent the movement of weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems and related materials, by ground, air or sea, to and from countries of proliferation concern.
"The Six-Party Talks is not just a U.S. issue," DeTrani said. "It affects each of the countries sitting around the table. It is a regional issue, and indeed a global issue."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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