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Time running out to get North Korea to talks, says US expert

BEIJING: North Korea is taking an increasingly hardline stance on talks on its nuclear ambitions, a US expert said on Saturday, after five days of talks with leaders of the isolated regime.

Selig Harrison, of the Washington-based Centre for International Policy, said Pyongyang was ready to return to six-party talks, but that the opportunity to persuade it to dismantle its nuclear programmes had been lost. The best that the US, Japan, Russia, South Korea and China could now hope for at talks that have been stalled since last June was a freeze of existing programmes, and time was running short even for that, Harrison said.

“There has been a major policy shift in Pyongyang in recent weeks. The hardline elements there are riding high, the army has increasingly asserted its control over nuclear policy,” Harrison told reporters in Beijing.

“Now North Korea is not prepared to discuss dismantling its nuclear weapons until complete normalisation of all economic and diplomatic relations with the US,” he said.

Harrison made the remarks after his ninth visit to North Korea, where in 1972 as a journalist for the Washington Post he and another US journalist became the first Americans to visit after the Korean War.

He has contacts with several senior officials in Pyongyang and on his latest visit he held talks with senior leaders including parliament head and number two leader Kim Yong-Nam and First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Kang Sok-Ju.

North Korea has demanded an open and explicit apology from the US for calling it an outpost of tyranny before it comes back to the table.

But Harrison said leaders hinted they could be satisfied with another gesture of respect or statement it sought peaceful coexistence, not regime change, with Pyongyang.

He also urged the Bush administration to make that gesture to allow for negotiations on a nuclear freeze before North Korea reprocesses more spent fuel rods, the process of converting fuel extracted from nuclear reactors into material suitable for nuclear weapons or passes on its technology.

“What they really want is to negotiate a plutonium freeze,” Harrison said.

“They did make clear that they are ready to freeze their nuclear arsenal at present levels. Specifically they are ready to discuss a freeze of the five megawatt Yongbyon reactor,” he said.

The US has been relying on China, the North’s old ally and the provider of most of its food and fuel aid, to strong-arm Pyongyang back to the table, but Harrison said trade between the two was booming.

“China is buying all the North Korean minerals and metals it can get,” he said. “It shows that China is not exerting any economic leverage to push North Korea to talks.”

But Harrison also cautioned against the US using economic sanctions against the North, saying leaders had warned they would retaliate militarily if Washington attempted to enforce any sanctions with a naval blockade. reuters

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