WASHINGTON — House Democrats yesterday questioned U.S. policy on North Korea, challenging Undersecretary of State John Bolton on the effectiveness of the Bush administration’s tough stance on Pyongyang’s nuclear programs since the collapse of the Clinton-era Agreed Framework with the communist nation.
In written testimony submitted to the House International Relations Committee, Bolton said the United States "will not provide inducements or reward the North Koreans to come back into compliance with their international obligations."
He added that the United States "will not follow the mistaken path of the 1994 Agreed Framework," a deal under which North Korea pledged to freeze its nuclear programs in exchange for a U.S.-led consortium providing two new nuclear power reactors.
Initiating an extended exchange with Bolton, Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) asked the undersecretary "by what barometer can we say that we are better off vis-a-vis North Korea today than we were three years ago?"
"While there were obvious flaws with the policy of the prior administration, whereas the North Koreans were cheating on the Agreed Framework, it certainly, I think, can be said that the current success of this administration’s policy, if it can be argued it is no worse, it’s certainly been no better in achieving its results," Schiff said.
When the Bush administration took office, Bolton said, "North Korea was violating the Agreed Framework, was actively engaged in a production scope procurement effort to acquire the capability to do uranium enrichment, to be used in nuclear weapons, and the United States and others were supplying resources to the North Korean regime that, in effect, were propping that regime up."
Schiff then asked Bolton if he believed "we’re better off now that North Korea has reprocessed the spent fuel?"
"It’s not clear at all," Bolton replied, "when North Korea began reprocessing the plutonium. But the plutonium is only one side of the North Korean nuclear weapons effort." He added that a suspected uranium enrichment program "provides a completely separate route that simply continuing to keep the Agreed Framework in place, as many argued, would have permitted the North Koreans to continue to advance toward nuclear weapons through that route."
The standoff with Pyongyang is unlikely to be resolved during North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s tenure, said nonproliferation expert Victor Gilinsky in additional testimony. The United States could use other means to bring about a gradual lessening of tensions, he said.
"I don’t think this is going to be resolved with the current regime," Gilinsky said. "What we need to do is wait them out and hem them in as best we can and use other ways to soften them up and have the juices of capitalism maybe corrode their spirit," he added.
Joseph Cirincione, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the committee he thought a deal with North Korea was possible.
"I think we can do a deal with North Korea. I think we can buy them out for a fraction of what we’re spending on some other defense programs," Cirincione said. "Let’s make a deal that they can’t refuse," he added.
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