North Korea can expect to be the target of economic penalties until it returns to multilateral negotiations and undergoes permanent nuclear disarmament, U.S. President Barack Obama said Thursday (see GSN, Nov. 13).
In an interview given to the Yonhap News Agency just before he departed for his first presidential visit to Asia, Obama said that North Korea is faced with a choice of prosperity and security or continued international isolation.
"North Korea has the opportunity to move towards acceptance by the international community if it will comply with its international obligations and live up to its own commitments," the president said. "By taking irreversible steps towards the complete elimination of its nuclear program, North Korea will be following the peaceful path towards security and respect."
Pyongyang last held denuclearization talks with the other participants in the six-party talks -- China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States -- in December 2008. It declared it was through with the negotiations after being criticized for its April rocket launch, and subsequently conducted its second nuclear test.
"We believe the six-party talks are the best framework for reaching peaceful resolution and that the September 2005 Joint Statement clearly lays out the goals we must achieve," Obama said. "We are open to a bilateral meeting as part of the six-party process if that will lead to an expeditious resumption of the denuclearization negotiations."
Under the 2005 agreement, North Korea would receive diplomatic, security and economic benefits in exchange for permanently ending its nuclear weapons program.
In recent months, Pyongyang has been asking for direct talks with the United States. Last week, the U.S. State Department announced that it was sending special envoy Stephen Bosworth to Pyongyang before the year is over for direct talks on how to return the communist nation to the six-nation negotiations.
U.S. National Security Council official Jeffrey Bader said recent conciliatory remarks by Pyongyang were likely a tactic intended to win concessions in negotiations.
"Once the cycle of provocations was completed, North Korea [in the past] sat back to wait for a newer package of concessions from the U.S.," Bader said.
He said North Korea needed to demonstrate "genuine signs" of plans to end its nuclear program. "If we see that, there is no problem with bilateral contacts either in Pyongyang or elsewhere. We are not interested in talks for talks' sake. We are not interested in endorsing North Korea's dream of validation of a self-claimed nuclear power" (Hwang Doo-hyong, Yonhap News Agency I, Nov. 12).
There is significant skepticism among former North Korea hands over whether the country truly intends to give up its nuclear weapons program, Agence France-Presse reported.
"I see no indication that North Korea, in the foreseeable future, is prepared to give up its nuclear weapons programs on terms that the U.S. will find politically acceptable," former U.S. State Department Korea desk chief David Straub said today in Seoul, Yonhap reported.
Straub said he was not anticipating any major progress to come from Bosworth's impending trip to Pyongyang.
Straub said he believed Bosworth would offer a "short and simple message" that the Obama administration was prepared to offer the North a deal that would see it give up its nuclear ambitions in return for political benefits and foreign aid.
Pyongyang is not likely to be satisfied with such a proposal, Straub said. He added that the White House was also not believed to be weighing using U.S. armed might to force the North into ending its weapons program.
"What does this mean? It probably means a long stalemate," Straub said (Agence France-Presse/ABS-CBN News, Nov. 16).
Meanwhile, France's new special envoy to North Korea said yesterday that his recently finished trip to Pyongyang included extensive talks on delicate matters such as nuclear proliferation and the North's human rights record, the Associated Press reported yesterday.
In a radio interview, Lang said North Korean officials told him that "today there is no transfer of fissile or ballistic materials outside of Korea."
Lang said he did not dismiss the regime's assertion, but "we can ask, do you have proof?" (Associated Press I/Google News, Nov. 15).
Elsewhere, South Korean naval ships were forced to back off from their patrol of a disputed ocean boundary with North Korea yesterday after the North turned on the radar for its surface-to-ship missiles, AP reported.
North Korea's military had threatened to use force against the South after the two countries' navies briefly clashed last week near the contested ocean border line. According to a South Korean military officer, the skirmish resulted in no Southern casualties, though one North Korean sailor was killed.
Yonhap reported that the North fired up the radar for an hour at a facility on its the nation's western coast, though the news agency did not offer any reason for the event (Hyung-jin Kim, Associated Press II/Google News, Nov. 15).
North Korea appeared to disregard a Friday warning by Washington to not heighten tensions with the South following the naval skirmish, Yonhap reported.
"We urge North Korea to refrain from that kind of bellicose rhetoric in general and avoid any kind of provocative actions that will further inflame tension in the region," U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said (Hwang Doo-hyong, Yonhap News Agency II, Nov. 14).