Obstacles loom in N Korea nuke talks

WASHINGTON—Even as the Bush administration marks unprecedented progress in North Korean nuclear disarmament talks, two looming impediments could undermine years of delicate negotiations.
One is a suspicion, especially among U.S. conservatives, that North Korea has helped Syria pursue a nuclear weapons program. Such cooperation would raise the specter of a country that boasts nuclear weapons providing atomic assistance to a nation Washington considers hostile and a sponsor of terrorism.
The other issue is the U.S. claim the North pursued a secret uranium enrichment program, as well as its known plutonium production. A 1994 nuclear deal collapsed after the United States confronted the North with the uranium claim in 2002; years of acrimony and stalemate followed, culminating in a North Korean nuclear test last year.
North Korea is required to provide a list outlining all its nuclear programs by year-end as part of a six-nation disarmament process, and the United States will be pushing for credible details about these two sensitive issues to allow President Bush to move the accord forward. Bush is looking to North Korean disarmament as a way to burnish a legacy beleaguered by Iraq. A failure could turn into a political issue ahead of next year’s presidential and congressional elections. The North’s nuclear declaration will top the agenda of Christopher Hill, the lead U.S. envoy at the nuclear talks, during his trip this week to the country.
“Chris Hill’s credibility is really tied to the North Koreans coming clean on some type of uranium program,” said Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “If they don’t do that, it’s going to be extremely difficult” for the administration to sell the deal.
On Sept. 6, Israeli warplanes struck a target in Syria, which, according to media reports quoting unidentified U.S. officials, was a nuclear facility linked to North Korea. Some congressional staffers caution that the reports have not been supported by any public evidence.
At private talks Nov. 16 in New York, attended by current and former U.S. officials and North Korean government representatives, members of the American delegation pressed the North to provide details about any nuclear ties with Syria. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Victor Cha, a former White House adviser on North Korea, and others argued that it would be difficult to take the North off a U.S. list of state sponsors of terror, a crucial North Korean demand in nuclear talks, if there were a lack of clarity about whether the North had provided nuclear cooperation to Syria, according to a person at the meeting. Syria also is on the terror list.
Another participant said the Americans did not appear to have specific information about North Korean-Syrian nuclear dealings, aside from the news reports.
The participant described the exchange as people with an interest in the nuclear talks’ success trying to share with the North Koreans their anxiety over the reports. Both people spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. U.S. lawmakers wary of the North Korean negotiations have seized on the Syrian issue to urge caution. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Peter Hoekstra urged the Bush administration to provide information about the Israeli attack. The administration, they wrote, has “thrown an unprecedented veil of secrecy around the Israeli airstrike.”—Agencies