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North Korea and the Nuclear Threat
U.S. Envoy in China for Talks on Resolving Crisis
 Listen to the latest NPR News coverage.
Jan. 16, 2003 -- U.S. envoy James Kelly predicted Thursday in Beijing that resolving a nuclear standoff with North Korea will be a very slow process. And South Korea said it was prepared for a "worst-case scenario" that would include war on the Korean peninsula.
Kelly remained in Beijing, conferring with Chinese officials. The United States has welcomed an offer from China to host U.S. talks with North Korea, China's fellow communist state -- an offer North Korea initially rejected.
President Bush said Tuesday he would consider giving North Korea energy and food aid in exchange for a renewed commitment to end it nuclear weapons program.
"I want to remind the American peole that prior to North Korea making the decision it made, I had instructed our secretary of state to approach North Korea about a bold initiative," the president said. "An initiative which would talk about energy and food, because we care deeply about the suffering of the North Korean people."
And despite the grim words Thursday, South Korea's Reunification Ministry announced that it would hold Cabinet-level talks next week with the North, a meeting that would represent the nations' highest level of contact in three months.
The antipathy between North Korea and the United States is more than half a century old. The Demilitarized Zone slicing across the Korean peninsula is a bleak reminder that the war between North and South Korea, fought in the early days of the Cold War, never officially ended.
Mr. Bush reminded the world in his State of the Union address nearly a year ago that he considered North Korea to be part of an "Axis of Evil" that also included Iraq, Iran and other, unnamed states that the U.S. accuses of sponsoring terrorism. But it was in the fall of last year that the superpower and the reclusive nation often called "the last Stalinist state" edged toward a fresh crisis.
At a mid-October meeting with American diplomats in Pyongyang, North Korean officials admitted they had a secret nuclear weapons program. Mr. Bush called the news "troubling" but promised a diplomatic solution.
Then, in November, the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union -- in the form of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization -- agreed to suspend fuel-oil shipments to North Korea.
North Korea, saying it needed to produce more of its own power in the absence of the fuel aid, responded by announcing plans to restart a nuclear plant that had been closed in 1994 by agreement with the United States. U.S. officials fear the plant could also be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
Fears grew when it became apparent North Korea was also working on a second source of potential nuclear-bomb material: enriched uranium.
In late December, North Korea ordered U.N. officials who had been monitoring the plutonium plant to leave the country.
And with the Bush administration occupied elsewhere -- contemplating a possible military strike in Iraq and an expanding war against terrorism on several fronts -- North Korea has continued to ratchet up the nuclear rhetoric.
First came the news that North Korea would abandon the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, followed quickly by an assertion that ballistic missile tests might resume. The latter was particularly unsettling to neighbors South Korea and Japan. Both are in reach of North Korean missiles that have the capability of carrying nuclear warheads.
But there are continuing signs that North Korea's aggressive nuclear stance may be a negotiating posture. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat who served as ambassador to the United Nations under President Clinton, met with a North Korean delegation in Santa Fe over the weekend.
Though the State Department's Kelly termed the results of those talks "disappointing," many analysts saw the meeting as a vital first step toward a dialogue.
Richardson's past experience in talks with the North Korean regime precipitated the weekend conference, and NPR's Daniel Schorr says Richardson's view is that "the North Koreans tend to be belligerent in preparation for negotiations."
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