Problems May Doom U.S. Pact With N. Korea

SEOUL —  Throughout the past few days in Asia, President Clinton has been struggling to prevent North Korea from turning into the top global crisis for his administration next year.

The president has tried to work out a united front with Japan and South Korea, the two countries he is visiting. He hopes that the three allies together can persuade North Korea to stop firing missiles around the region, as well as prove that it has stopped developing nuclear weapons.

Clinton has held out to North Korea’s leadership the prospect of future economic rewards. The president has even carefully avoided irritating Pyongyang by forsaking a trip to the demilitarized zone, where Clinton eagerly posed for pictures when he came here in 1993.

On his current trip, the president has at times sounded almost plaintive as he has sought to preserve his 4-year-old policy of engagement with Pyongyang and to avoid having to come up with a newer, tougher approach.

“I do not want to change policy,” Clinton declared at a news conference here Saturday. “And I hope that the North Koreans will not do anything to force us to change policy.”

But change is already in the air.

Congress balked this fall at providing the funds the administration needs to carry out its North Korea policy. It eventually went along, but only after setting tough conditions that must be met in 1999 for any further appropriations.

The administration’s policy is based largely on a deal worked out in 1994 between U.S. and North Korean officials.

The Clinton administration agreed then to arrange for North Korea to obtain civilian nuclear reactors and other energy supplies in exchange for closing nuclear weapons facilities that were ready to produce plutonium.

That accord is still in effect, and during the past few days, Clinton and his top aides have taken pains to say often that it has succeeded.

“We are convinced that without the agreement . . . North Korea already would have produced a sizable amount of weapons-grade plutonium,” the president said.

The problem for Clinton is that the agreement does not cover or have any answers for the problems that have cropped up with North Korea in the past six months:

* In August, North Korea test-fired a newly developed missile across Japanese airspace. Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi told Clinton this week that the missile firing “was a very shocking experience for us.” Yet U.S. officials acknowledge there is nothing in the ’94 deal that bars North Korea from developing or testing its missiles.

* Also last summer, the administration informed Congress that U.S. intelligence had found a suspicious underground construction project that might be the start of a new nuclear weapons installation. The United States wants to inspect this site.

However, National Security Council aide Jack Pritchard acknowledged in a Tokyo briefing that the 1994 deal does not have any provision specifically giving the United States the power to inspect the site. And North Korea recently demanded $300 million to allow such an inspection, a request the Clinton administration turned down, saying it was tantamount to extortion.

These problems have prompted critics in Washington--not just members of Congress but quite a few foreign policy specialists--to question the administration’s wisdom in continuing to rely so heavily on the 1994 deal.

“Both that deal and U.S. policy seem to be unraveling, and another foreign policy crisis looms,” former Undersecretary of State Arnold Kanter asserted earlier this month. “If, despite the [1994 deal], North Korea poses a continuing and growing threat to U.S. interests, then the ‘agreed framework’ either is inadequate or has failed. A better question is whether and how it can be revised . . . or whether a different approach is more likely to be successful.”

While in Asia, Clinton and his top aides have sought repeatedly to send a message to North Korea: Its leaders are coming to a point where they will have to make a choice about how they want to deal with the United States and its allies.

“North Korea is now at a crossroads,” National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger said here Saturday. “They can choose a path of reconciliation or a path of confrontation.”

However, it is far from certain that Pyongyang will choose either of these two options.

North Korea’s past behavior shows that it is remarkably skillful at blending both approaches. It often goes to the brink, challenges, pulls back in exchange for benefits, and then later confronts once again.

That pattern may repeat itself.

South Korean President Kim Dae Jung told a news conference Saturday that “North Korea . . . is showing two sides, both negative and positive.”

In fact, what the United States now wants from North Korea--a fundamental, once-and-for-all choice to moderate its behavior in exchange for economic benefits and a new relationship with the United States--is what the Clinton administration thought it had won with the 1994 deal.

Norm Levin, an analyst with the Rand Corp., said Washington has operated on the assumption that North Korea can be bought off, that it is willing to change its behavior and that there are factions in the government that would support greater openness with the West.

“That’s a lot of assumptions,” Levin said.

Despite Clinton’s recent efforts in Tokyo and Seoul, it also appears that the administration may have difficulty keeping Japan and South Korea in line with U.S. policy toward North Korea.

A few years ago, Japan wanted to be much more conciliatory toward Pyongyang than did the United States and South Korea. But since the North Korean missile passed over its territory last summer, Japan has become the most hawkish of the three allies.

Meanwhile, since Kim became president about a year ago, South Korea has often pressed for a relaxation of U.S. policy toward Pyongyang. During a visit to Washington in June, Kim suggested an easing of American economic sanctions on North Korea.

“Over the nine months since my inauguration, I have patiently and consistently pushed” a policy of engagement, the South Korean president said at a dinner Saturday. “The result is gradually emerging now. North Korea is cautiously, but noticeably, taking measures to increase interaction and cooperation between the South and the North.”

South Korea was far less upset by North Korea’s missile test than was Japan or even the United States. A former South Korean official said last week that officials here seem to be less concerned than Washington about North Korea’s underground construction site.

Throughout his Asia trip, Clinton has done his best to ease these submerged tensions over North Korea.

Yet despite his efforts, in the months after the president goes home, the administration’s policy will be under greater challenge than it has been in years.

* N. KOREA DRAWS WARNING: Clinton criticizes Pyongyang’s suspected work on an underground nuclear site. A10