Looking For A Deal This Time?
The United States and North Korea may be reassessing their deadlock
Like any good diplomat, Christopher Hill knows how to dampen expectations before sitting down to hash out a deal. But more than most envoys, Hill, the top U.S. negotiator in talks resuming in Beijing this week over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, has ample reason to let some skepticism show.
Fifty-two frustrating months into a confrontation with North Korea over its nuclear weapons programs, the six-nation talks established to rein in Pyongyang's atomic breakout have, so far, netted nothing. Nothing, that is, except neglected promises on paper. In that time, North Korea has tested ballistic missiles and an atomic bomb, declared itself a nuclear power, and multiplied its supply of plutonium from enough for one or two bombs to as many as 13-with most estimates now suggesting six to eight.
Even advocates for negotiations increasingly suspect that, despite its decision to rejoin talks, the North has made a strategic choice to stick with nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrent to any effort to dislodge Asia's most secretive and anti-American regime. Time, it seems, has been working against Hill and others seeking a deal: With Pyongyang's nuclear buildup and its seeming judgment that the administration is tied down by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il may believe that he can wait out President Bush and gain global acquiescence to the North's nuclear status. The U.S. bargaining position, says Gary Samore, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, is "really much weaker."
But it is not just the North's prickly intransigence that has made Hill's task look titanic. Policy struggles within the administration have led to fits of incoherence-or simply straitjacketed U.S. officials assigned to bargain with the North. The lines of battle have pitted hawks, who publicly back the negotiations with the communist North but privately see them as a dead end, against those who favor engagement. "We had warfare going on the entire time I was there," recalls David Straub, a former Korea policy aide who resigned from the State Department last year.
A window on these debates opened last month after the resignation of John Bolton, a key hard-liner who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "Six-party talks have not worked," Bolton said in Tokyo. "Over time," he declared, "the only answer to the North Korean nuclear weapons program is the collapse of the regime." Despite repeated professions of support for a diplomatic approach, Bush himself has shown ambivalence at times about dickering with a dictatorship. He jettisoned the Clinton-era outreach to the North and did not conceal his personal antipathy toward Kim.
As the diplomatic stalemate wore on, hawks found a tool with unexpected capacity to reach out and hurt Kim's regime: a crackdown on money laundering, counterfeiting of U.S. dollars, and other illicit, money-making trade. The administration announced sanctions on a Macao bank alleged to be laundering money for North Korea. That happened just before Hill and envoys from South Korea, Japan, China, Russia-and North Korea-inked a joint statement on principles for nuclear disarmament in return for security assurances, normalization of relations, and economic and energy aid.
Sledgehammer. Under U.S. pressure, Macao authorities subsequently forced Banco Delta Asia to freeze some $24 million in North Korean accounts. Though the amount seemed inconsequential, the U.S. sanctions prompted banks in China and Vietnam to close accounts or refuse to deal with North Korea. Treasury 's action had the effect of discouraging even legal commerce with the North-enraging Pyongyang, which boycotted nuclear talks for more than a year. "The U.S. found a ball-peen hammer," says Charles Pritchard, a former U.S. official who negotiated with the North. "When they struck it, it sounded like a sledgehammer to the North Koreans." Pyongyang's response, Robert Joseph, the departing under secretary of state for arms control and international security, told U.S. News last fall, "does, I believe, demonstrate the vulnerability of the regime. It's more than a defensive reaction."
As Hill, an assistant secretary of state, met last month with North Korean diplomats and hopscotched across Asia and Europe to restart the nuclear talks, the internal policy skirmishes flared up again. U.S. diplomats moved to block U.N. development aid to North Korea on the grounds that the funds could be diverted to the Kim regime. The State Department said the action reflected an ongoing drive for U.N. reforms and the U.N.'s own schedule for making spending decisions. But other officials worried that the action could provoke Pyongyang at a sensitive moment and saw instead, as one put it, "an effort to undermine" Hill.
Earlier in January, U.S. News has learned, a State Department official at a meeting in Paris suggested seeking a travel ban on the very North Korean diplomats who negotiate with Hill. Another official at State denied the report, and a senior U.S. policymaker said no such effort is underway. Still, the audacity of suggesting such a travel ban prompted Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar last week to complain of actions that could "subvert" Hill's efforts and to demand an explanation. Says Donald Zagoria, who has organized gatherings with North Korean officials for the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in New York, "I am flabbergasted at the brazenness with which some are trying to undercut the process."
Despite the hurdles at home, current and former administration officials say, Hill now has a greater degree of "running room"-the flexibility, for example, to conduct three days of initially secret bilateral meetings in Berlin with North Korean officials last month. "The president and Secretary [Condoleezza] Rice have told Hill to get a deal," one former senior official tells U.S. News. Adds a serving official, "He's been given a mandate."
Gestures. Other developments point to some movement on the nuclear front. Treasury officials last week conducted unprecedented, detailed talks with North Korean finance counterparts, reviewing nearly 50 North Korean-related accounts at Banco Delta Asia. One objective appears to be identifying accounts that are not part of illegal activities, setting the stage for their unfreezing. A senior U.S. official tells U.S. News that North Korea has dropped its demand to lift the financial sanctions before it negotiates on the nuclear question, saying, "They've walked back."
More broadly, the Berlin meetings delved into practical ideas for implementing the September 2005 agreement; it was, says one official, a "freewheeling dialogue" that was used to "shake some things loose." South Korean officials have hinted at both U.S. and North Korean concessions. Initial steps might include a North Korean freeze on its plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor and the return of U.N. nuclear inspectors-as the financial squeeze is eased and some benefits, likely energy supplies, begin to flow. Doubts remain, however, that North Korea may be mostly intent on deflecting international pressure. A senior U.S. official says the "sense of urgency" this time exceeds past rounds of talks. But there is also a studied lack of optimism. "No one's confident at all."
Whatever the outcome in Beijing, the sense in Washington is that Bush badly needs a foreign policy "win," and North Korea could be it. "Rice has been given a legacy charge. The clock is ticking," says Pritchard. And patience with the six-party saga is waning. Without toutable progress soon, it just may snap.
This story appears in the February 12, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.