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Bush out-hawked on North
Korea?
By Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON - With the Republicans now in control of
both the House and Senate in the aftermath of Tuesday's
mid-term elections in the United States, it's a
foregone conclusion that President George W Bush will have
a much easier time pushing his foreign policy
agenda through Congress, particularly his
military budgets for the coming war against Iraq.
But on the issue of North Korea and its recent
admission that it has embarked on a uranium-enrichment
program, there are signs that Congress could be even
more hawkish than Bush. That could spell trouble for
Japan, South Korea and China as they seek to defuse the
nuclear crisis that is slowly reaching a boiling point
on the Korean Peninsula.
In particular, Bush is
likely to come under strong pressure from lawmakers to
suspend the shipments of heavy fuel oil to North Korea
that are a key part of the US contribution to the 1994
Agreed Framework under which Pyongyang agreed to
dismantle its weapons program.
Although
officials in both Washington and Pyongyang have
indicated that the framework is dead, neither side has
formally moved to end it. On Wednesday, after a brief
trip to North Korea, former US ambassador to Seoul
Donald Gregg said the framework "is hanging by a
thread", but added that "North Korea is still supporting
it".
Meanwhile, a tanker carrying 42,500 tons of
fuel purchased by the Korean Peninsula Energy
Development Organization (KEDO) is scheduled to depart
on Sunday from Singapore carrying this month's promised
shipment. If many in Congress - and a few officials in
the Bush administration - had their way, that tanker
would never leave port, and no more would follow.
When the Bush administration briefed
congressional staffers in the days after the news broke
that North Korea had informed assistant secretary of
state James Kelly about its uranium program, many
Republicans were furious that the White House was doing
nothing to stop the October shipment and threatened to
move quickly to defund the program.
A
precipitous move like that could further inflame the
situation and persuade North Korea that further
negotiations with the United States are fruitless. The
government of Kim Jong-il, according to Gregg and other
Americans who have been talking to Pyongyang, want to
use their admission about the uranium program as
leverage to begin negotiations on a non-aggression
treaty.
"I think they would like the United
States to give them some assurances that we don't want
to blow them out of the water," Gregg said in Seoul.
At the same time, South Korea has made it clear
it wants the oil shipments to continue. US, South Korean
and Japanese officials will discuss the future of the
1994 nuclear deal when the KEDO consortium meets in New
York next Thursday. During those talks, the South "will
call on the United States and Japan not to suspend the
light-water reactor project or cancel fuel-oil
provisions to the North even if it fails to take swift
action regarding the nuclear issue", a South Korean
government official told the Korea Herald on Wednesday.
The nuclear deal will also be discussed this
weekend, when Kelly meets with his South Korean and
Japanese counterparts for the Trilateral Coordination
and Oversight Group. It is used by the three countries
to coordinate their policies toward North Korea.
Kelly himself has not said whether the
administration wants to cut off the oil shipments. But
in an interview last week on US public television, he
expressed strong doubts about continuing the program.
"For the next year, I see very little support in the US
Congress to continue providing these fuel shipments," he
said. On Tuesday, the New York Times, citing unnamed
officials, said the Bush administration "would prefer to
stop" this month's shipment but has been unable to
persuade KEDO to go along.
The situation is all
the more dangerous because some of the lawmakers
pressing for a more aggressive policy toward North Korea
are Democrats who like to flex their foreign-policy
qualifications by taking positions to the right of the
White House.
They are led by Representative Ed
Markey, a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts. Well
known in Washington for his expertise on energy and
nuclear power, Markey has taken the lead in pressing the
Bush administration to terminate all funding for fuel
oil and the light-water reactors being built by KEDO.
Markey, unlike many in the administration, apparently
believes that North Korea represents a greater threat
than Iraq.
Last month, Markey and three other
lawmakers wrote a letter to Bush saying the oil
shipments "should be permanently terminated" and asking
the administration to urge Japan and South Korea to
terminate KEDO's reactor program. The letter was also
signed by Senators Jon Kyl, Jesse Helms and Bob Smith
and Representative Chris Cox. All of them are
Republicans; both Helms and Smith will leave the Senate
after this term.
Taking a page from Bush's
"regime change" policies, the letter encouraged the
administration to "work aggressively with its allies to
prepare for a future beyond the current Stalinist
regime" in Pyongyang. "We see no viable alternative
given the proven failure of subsidizing North Korea and
of relying upon that country's promises, as well as the
regimes continued deplorable treatment of the North
Korean people."
Markey further displayed his
hawkish tendencies in an interview, also on public
television, on October 21. Taking issue with officials
who say North Korea's history is different than Iraq's,
he declared that each country has "a homicidal maniac
running the country".
Both regimes, he added,
are "attempting to obtain ballistic missiles, but North
Korea is far ahead of Iraq. And third, they're each
attempting to develop a nuclear payload, but again Korea
is far ahead of Iraq. So in terms of what it is that is
driving our concern with this axis of evil, North Korea
is actually further ahead."
That
characterization goes much further than some of the
hardliners within the Bush administration. And while
Bush himself has called the latest developments
"troubling", he has publicly urged a diplomatic
solution.
For those favoring a negotiated end to
the standoff, there may be hope in the Senate. With
Helms retiring and the Democrats now in the minority,
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be led by
Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana. Lugar, a conservative
who favors negotiation over confrontation, played a bit
part in the 1994 North Korea crisis when he was asked by
then president Bill Clinton to travel to Pyongyang as a
US emissary. But North Korea refused entry to Lugar and
Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, and instead welcomed former
president Jimmy Carter. Carter's discussions paved the
way for the framework agreement.
On Thursday,
Lugar made it clear that he favors diplomacy with North
Korea. In a press briefing, he rejected the stance taken
by Markey and some in the administration, including
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security John Bolton, who rejected any
talks with Pyongyang until North Korea ends its
uranium-enrichment program.
"Negotiations with
North Korea have to continue, whether or not we have
formal talks," Lugar said. Noting the enormous military
presence on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone, he
said, "We have to keep going here."
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