U.S. Offers Carrot To North Korea

With negotiations sidetracked for nearly a year, the Bush administration offered a couple of enticements to North Korea on Monday -- direct talks and recognition of its sovereignty -- in a bid to derail the Koreans' nuclear weapons program.

The twin offers go to the heart of North Korea's quest for international acceptance, but neither is totally new, and the impact on the often erratic leadership in that secretive state is anyone's guess.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday that North Korea had sufficient plutonium to be converted into five or six nuclear weapons.

Trying to stop a process that U.S. intelligence agencies are convinced already has produced one or two bombs, the State Department offered direct U.S. talks if North Korea ends its boycott of six-party negotiations.

In the past, the United States has held discussions with North Korean officials against the backdrop of the six-party talks, department spokesman Tom Casey said. "And if the North Koreans were to return to the talks," he said, "we would certainly continue that practice."

The statement came in response to one by a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman that seemed to soften Pyongyang's demand for direct dealings with the Bush administration.

According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, the spokesman said North Korea had not demanded one-on-one talks separately from the six-party negotiations.

Casey's response was receptive to that formula.

On Sunday, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said "there is no harm in having direct talks in addition to the six-party talks," which include China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

"We have direct talks with a lot of other places that we have totally disagreed with," he said. "We had direct talks with the Soviet Union."

North Korea has boycotted the six-party talks since last June after retracting a promise to return to the table last September.

The negotiations are about ending the North's nuclear program in exchange for economic incentives and assurances from the United States that its security would not be jeopardized.

The second U.S. gesture was a firm assertion that North Korea is a sovereign nation.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in a CNN interview, said, "The United States, of course, recognizes that North Korea is sovereign. It's obvious. They are a member of the United Nations."

She also reiterated the administration's assurance that "we have no intention to attack or invade North Korea."

Summing up the two gestures, spokesman Casey said, "Clearly, the United States recognizes that North Korea is a sovereign nation. We've certainly talked with them in the context of the six-party talks."

By Barry Schweid