Pat Dollard | Young Americans

WASHINGTON, Jan 26 (AFP) Jan 27, 2008

The Bush administration is trying to keep a lid on growing frustration over faltering talks to rid North Korea of nuclear weapons as criticism surfaces from hardliners in the wings, experts say.

Though President George W. Bush’s six-country diplomatic strategy still had broad support, the public criticism exposed doubts over where it was leading, according to non-proliferation experts who favor US engagement with Pyongyang.

Some speculate that the secretive Stalinist state may be hedging its bets as it sizes up the US presidential election campaign to succeed Bush and a new South Korean president who takes office in February.

“I thought the administration is getting a little nervous,” David Albright, who works on independent verification of North Korean denuclearization, said after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week publicly rebuked a critic.

“What I have seen so far is Bush is committed (to the diplomatic strategy) but they (in the administration) know North Korea has to make some concessions and it’s not doing that,” he told AFP.

“So the whole process is slowing down,” said Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

“And that’s frustrating for the administration because they want to make more progress,” and then they face “people coming out and trashing it from inside” and outside the administration, he added.

The criticism came from Jay Lefkowitz, Bush’s special envoy on North Korea’s human rights, during a January 17 speech to the American Enterprise Institute, the bastion of neo-conservative hardliners.

He charged that North Korea used its nuclear arsenal to “extort” foreign aid, was “not serious” about disarming, and would likely not give up its weapons before Bush’s term ends in January 2009.

After trying to isolate North Korea, which Bush once called part of the “axis of evil” with Iraq and Iran, the administration opted for six-country negotiations involving the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia.

North Korea, which staged its first nuclear test in October 2006, then agreed last February to disable its plutonium-producing plants and declare all nuclear programs and facilities by December 31 in return for major energy aid.

Major progress on disablement has been made but the talks have reportedly hit a key problem — the North’s refusal to address its suspected highly enriched uranium weapons program to the satisfaction of the United States.

It missed the end-of-year deadline to submit a full and accurate declaration on its nuclear activities.

Lefkowitz called for a “new approach” in the talks — “perhaps even bilaterally” — with North Korea that would permanently link human rights as part of the engagement policy and a critical condition for any normalization of diplomatic relations.

In addition, he said that China and South Korea — the two nations with the most leverage over North Korea — were “unwilling to apply significant pressure on Pyongyang” to abandon its nuclear weapons arsenal.

Nuclear expert Gary Samore said Lefkowitz was voicing broader frustration.

“He said publicly what a lot of administration officials believe privately — that the North Koreans are certainly not, in the remainder of this year, going to give up their nuclear weapons,” said Samore, the vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in an article published on the CFR website.

“And it looks like they may not even submit a credible declaration, in which case the whole process would stop. In that case, the next administration would have to pick the whole issue up,” he said.

Jon Wolfsthal, a specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who previously worked on North Korean denuclearization with the US government, said the diplomatic approach is safe for now.

“The strength and visibility of the rebuke from Secretary Rice was a clear sign that the dominant view is still one of engagement and working the six-party process,” he told AFP.

Vice President Dick Cheney and other hardliners were isolated, he said.

“However, there is a big question …which is how much patience does the Bush administration, particularly President Bush have,” Wolfsthal said.

“If time runs out on the Bush administration are they going to leave a process of engagement for their successor; or in the waning months of the administration will they try to salt the earth so nothing else can grow?” he asked.

He hazarded a guess that the administration is behaving in a way that amounts to “let’s keep everything else (North Korea and other issues) from becoming a crisis so we can deal with Iraq,” the overwhelming priority.