Secret Tour of D.C. For North Koreans: Trip Hints at Better Relations With Regime

Oct 04, 07:44 AM

Current Headlines: By Bay Fang, Chicago Tribune

Oct. 4--WASHINGTON -- In a highly secret excursion, a small group of North Korean officials quietly toured the sights of Washington in a mini-bus early last month, seeing the White House, driving by the Pentagon and standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where they recalled Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech.

The trip, which included the entire North Korean mission to the United Nations, as well as spouses and children, was unprecedented. Under normal circumstances, the members of the small North Korean mission in New York -- the only official representatives of Pyongyang in the U.S. -- must stay within a 25-mile radius of Manhattan.

"For all intents and purposes, Washington has been a closed city for the North Koreans," said Fred Carriere, executive director of the non-profit Korea Society, who accompanied the 16 North Koreans.

The sightseeing trip was a sign of a softening U.S. relationship with North Korea, a nuclear-armed nation that many in Washington consider a pariah.

It was approved by Christopher Hill, chief U.S. negotiator with the North Koreans on the nuclear issue, who on Wednesday spelled out a deal under which Pyongyang will disable its main nuclear reactor facility and provide a complete list of its nuclear programs by Dec. 31.

In return, the North Koreans will receive a million tons of heavy fuel oil or its equivalent and begin to move toward normalizing relations with the U.S. and the other parties involved in the so-called Six-Party Talks.

To many, the deal suggests the newly gentle approach to the North Koreans may be paying off, although it has proved controversial among those advocating a harder line against Pyongyang at a time when questions have been raised about whether the North Koreans are helping another U.S. adversary, Syria, develop a nuclear program.

Orchestra visit planned

In another example of the newer approach, U.S. officials said a four-person delegation from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra will depart Thursday for Pyongyang to arrange a performance there in the near future. The delegation will be escorted by a senior State Department official.

President Bush, at a town hall-style meeting in Lancaster, Pa., used the Korea deal to respond to a question about whether he would hold direct talks with the Iranians. "If your question is, 'Will you ever sit down with them?' we've proven we would with North Korea, and the answer is, 'Yeah, just so long as we can achieve something, so long as we are able to get our objective,'" Bush said.

The president seems to have grown increasingly interested in the softer approach toward North Korea, analysts said.

"This is Bush's best chance for a foreign-policy victory before he leaves office," said Joseph Cirincione, director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress.

On their trip to Washington, the North Koreans -- some of whom have been stationed in New York for more than a decade -- exhibited a sophisticated knowledge of U.S. history. According to their guide, they read the walls of the Jefferson Memorial, questioning the former president's assertion that all men were created equal.

"One pointed to the quote and said, 'But we understand he had slaves,'" Carriere recalled.

He added that, like many tourists in Washington, they were surprised by how unimposing the White House was. "They were like, 'Is that all?'" he said.

Under the new agreement, Pyongyang -- which tested a nuclear device a year ago and is believed to have enough plutonium to make at least eight or nine atomic bombs -- will give a full declaration of its nuclear capabilities, including any uranium enrichment programs, and disable its core nuclear facilities at Yongbyon by Dec. 31.

The U.S. will lead a team of experts to Yongbyon next week to prepare for disablement. Last week, Bush authorized $25 million in aid for the North Koreans, which would cover the cost of as much as 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil.

In a conference call with reporters, Hill said the U.S. agreed to begin a process of removing North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism in parallel with Pyongyang's actions on the ground. He refused to give a timeline.

"This does not mean to say that ... our concerns about this country will be over or frankly this country's problems will be over," Hill said. "But I do believe that if we can get North Korea to understand that it has a better future without nuclear weapons, I think that puts us in a better position to work with North Korea on other issues and to try to bring it into the family of nations."

While the talks -- which involved the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan and Russia meeting jointly with North Korea -- at first achieved little after their inception in 2003, they gained momentum late last year.

"This kind of deal usually involves an interagency process, but this one was taken right to the top," said Mike Green, a former director for Asia at the National Security Council. "Lots of people were worried it was going too fast."

Ex-ambassador's concerns

John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is one such person, maintaining that the Bush administration is making a huge mistake by trusting Pyongyang to abide by its promises. "This is fundamentally contrary to what Bush said he believed in his first term," Bolton said. "The Bush administration has become Clintonized."

One of the fears maintained by critics of the softer approach is that North Korea may be spreading its nuclear knowledge to other countries. On Sept. 6, two days before the North Korean diplomats' trip to Washington, Israel conducted a bombing raid inside Syria, which some believe targeted nuclear materials that had been shipped from North Korea.

The new deal includes a commitment by North Korea not to transfer nuclear materials, technology or know-how.

"Everyone on the outside talks about the right flank of the administration trying to undercut the negotiators," said Victor Cha, who was deputy head of the U.S. delegation to the talks until he left the National Security Council in May. "But they [the conservative faction] are not an issue anymore. The decision has already been made."

Carriere said in the five or six years he had been working with the North Koreans, they had loosened up.

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25-mile limit on some diplomats

Diplomats from North Korea -- along with Iran and Cuba -- are prohibited from traveling more than 25 miles from United Nations headquarters under the so-called Headquarters Agreement of 1947.

The agreement facilitates the entry into the U.S. of envoys who otherwise would be denied visas because their countries have limited or no diplomatic relations with the U.S.

-- Tribune news services

bfang@tribune.com

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