Powell: U.S.-N. Korea Nuke Deal Dead

The Bush administration considers its nuclear weapons agreement with North Korea effectively dead and is exploring economic and diplomatic steps to pressure the communist government to abandon its nuclear ambitions, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.

He described the 1994 U.S.-North Korean deal as a political framework, rather than an arms accord, under which North Korea pledged to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in return for construction of two light-water reactors, financed mostly by South Korea and Japan.

The United States said last week that North Korea had admitted to having a program to enrich uranium to make nuclear weapons, which violates the agreement. In talks with a U.S. envoy this month, North Korean officials said they considered the agreement — signed eight years ago Monday — invalid because the new reactors were not expected to be finished by 2003 as promised.

North Korea "blamed us for their actions and then said they considered that agreement nullified," Powell said. "When you have an agreement between two parties, and one says it's nullified, then it's hard to see what you do with such an agreement."

U.S. officials have said there were aspects of the agreement that the United States wants to preserve, including a U.N.-monitored freeze on North Korea's earlier nuclear program.

"I think it is now important for the entire international community, especially North Korea's neighbors, to put maximum pressure on North Korea to make the point to them that this is totally inconsistent with trying to improve the lives of your people," Powell said Sunday in a broadcast interview.

"This will get you nowhere. North Korea is a starving country with a broken economy, a broken society. It seemed to be reaching out in recent weeks" to South Korea and other nations "and then we have this matter."

Powell said in a separate broadcast interview that North Korean leader Kim Jung Il constitutes "a threat in his own right" but less so than Iraq's Saddam Hussein, whom the United States is pressing to oust by military force because of his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

"It's not a good comparison," Powell said, citing the Iraqi president's use of such weapons on his people and against neighbors and his country's wealth from oil.

Powell said the United States has "no military plans on the table right now" for a military invasion of North Korea. When compared with Iraq, North Korea, with its 1.7 million-man army and array of missiles, attack aircraft and other capabilities, "is a lot stronger militarily, but it is sitting on a very rotten base with respect to its economy," the secretary said.

"This regime is especially troubling because it is such an erratic regime. It's left over from another age almost. It's the last of the old Stalinist world. And that should give us some concern."

The administration is "deliberately discussing" the situation with Japan, South Korea, China, Russia and other countries in the region "encouraging them to engage with the North Koreans," Powell said.

On Sunday South Korea presented its demand that the North abandon its nuclear weapons program, but was met with silence, South Korean officials said.

The North's nuclear issue was a main topic at Cabinet-level talks that opened in the North's capital, Pyongyang. It was the first official opportunity to react to the reclusive North's stunning admission to the United States that it has a program to enrich uranium to make nuclear weapons.

"We demanded that North Korea faithfully honor all international agreements it has signed," Rhee Bong-jo, a South Korean spokesman, said after the first round of talks ended after 50 minutes.

"We also asked them to open dialogue with concerned countries and the international society and take convincing actions," Rhee said in the pooled news reports distributed in Seoul. No foreign reporters were allowed to cover the talks.

Rhee said North Korean officials "just listened" to the demands and did not respond. A formal North Korean response to the South Korean demand was expected in another round of talks on Monday, South Korean officials said.

One step the United States is exploring is to suspend the annual supply of 500,000 tons of heating oil to North Korea specified under the 1994 agreement. The program is designed to help North Korea meet its energy needs during a transition period before planned the new reactors are on line.

"We're looking at all of the things that rest on the agreed framework, to see what is in our interest to keep doing, what is in our interest not to keep doing," Powell said in a another broadcast interview Sunday.

He mentioned plutonium stored at a facility in Yongbyon that is being monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Energy Department workers. "We don't want to see that suddenly become unwatched," Powell said. "So, we have to be very careful and move with a certain deliberateness."

President Bush plans to discuss the situation this week with Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who visits Mr. Bush's ranch on Friday, and the leaders of Russia and Asian countries during next week's Pacific rim economic summit in Mexico.

"We'll move forward as a group of nations that are concerned about this issue," Powell said.

Powell also addressed reports that countries such as Pakistan, China and Russia had provided North Korea with materials to help with development of their nuclear weapons programs.

Today, all of those nations "realize the seriousness of any kind of proliferation activity that would involve North Korea," Powell said.

He said he was assured "400 percent" by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in a Friday telephone conversation that Pakistan was not participating in such activity. "I'm just reporting what he said. ... I believe he understands the consequences of such behavior, and I take his word for it," Powell said.