North Korean Offer Could Pave Way for New Missile Negotiations
In an apparent demonstration of good faith, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told a visiting delegation of European Union officials today that Pyongyang would continue its moratorium on ballistic missile tests until at least 2003. Kim also stated that he would hold another summit with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, but only after the Bush administration completes its review of North Korea policy.
The encouraging announcement comes at a time of souring relations between the U.S. and North Korea. In March 2001, President Bush told Kim Dae Jung that the U.S. was in no hurry to resume his predecessor’s process of engagement with North Korea that nearly culminated in an agreement that would have ended Pyongyang’s development and export of ballistic missiles and related technologies. Only a day before, Secretary of State Colin Powell had told reporters that the U.S. planned to “pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off” in engaging North Korea. The overnight policy shift prompted North Korea to threaten to end its missile test moratorium and to stall its rapprochement with South Korea.
North Korea has also been cast as the main bogeyman behind the U.S. pursuit of a highly controversial anti-ballistic missile system, which the Bush administration is committed to deploying.
Another agreement with North Korea, the 1994 Agreed Framework, has come under renewed scrutiny. Under the agreement, North Korea gave up a fledgling nuclear weapons program in exchange for two light-water nuclear reactors and annual deliveries of heavy fuel oil. However, the reactors still have not been built due to safety and liability concerns, the poor state of North Korea’s power grid, and charges that the reactors will advance Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration is exploring possible alternatives to light-water reactors that would meet North Korea’s energy needs, but attempts to change the framework could cause it to fall apart altogether.
Kim Jong Il’s extension of the missile test moratorium therefore provides a new starting point for missile negotiations with the U.S. and promising opportunity for the Bush administration to put relations with Pyongyang back on the right track. If the U.S. can complete a missile agreement with North Korea, it would eliminate a major threat to the U.S. security and reduce pressure to deploy costly and unproven missile defenses. The Bush administration should not brush aside this opportunity. To do so could provoke North Korea into resuming its nuclear and missile programs and jeopardize the South Korean “sunshine policy” of engagement with the North.
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