Cheney Makes Clear U.S. Is Not Willing to Bend on North Korea

SEOUL —  Vice President Dick Cheney stepped up pressure on Asian nations to embrace the U.S. stance on North Korea this week, renewing Bush administration warnings that the reclusive regime could provide nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and touch off a regional arms race.

After meeting with South Korea’s acting president and foreign minister this morning, Cheney said the U.S. and the government in Seoul “stand together in insisting on a Korean peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons.”

But Cheney diplomatically avoided noting that the South Korean government had been moving toward a policy of conciliation with North Korea, and did not mention Thursday’s parliamentary election that gave a slight majority to the Uri Party -- which is in favor of greater cooperation with the North.

In his visits to Japan, China and South Korea, Cheney delivered strong warnings on North Korea -- both privately and publicly -- reiterating Washington’s assessment that the North already had nuclear weapons, was building more, and posed an increasing threat to its Asian neighbors as well as the United States.

“Time is not necessarily on our side,” he told students at Shanghai’s Fudan University on Thursday. “We worry that, given what they’ve done in the past, and given what we estimate to be their current capability, that North Korea could well, for example, provide [nuclear weapons] ... to, say, a terrorist organization. We know that there are terrorist organizations out there like Al Qaeda that have sought to acquire these kinds of weapons in the past.”

And in a comment designed to get China’s attention, Cheney warned that if North Korea deployed nuclear-armed missiles, “other nations in the region” might go nuclear as well. That was a veiled reference to Japan, China’s strategic rival, which has the technical expertise to build nuclear weapons but has chosen not to do so.

One of Cheney’s main goals in Asia this week has been to convince China, Japan and South Korea -- which along with Russia and the U.S. have been engaging in six-party talks with North Korea on the nuclear issue -- that the Bush administration will not soften its demand that North Korea dismantle its nuclear programs as soon as possible.

China has urged Cheney and President Bush to show more “flexibility” in negotiations with North Korea -- for example, by agreeing to a step-by-step process that would reward North Korea with economic aid as the regime made incremental steps toward dismantling its nuclear programs.

But Cheney, who has been a strong opponent of that kind of “incremental” approach, spent much of this week telling the Chinese and others why he believed that strategy was flawed.

“Our concern is that North Korea has, in the past, entered into agreements to give up its aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons, in 1994, and then subsequently violated that agreement,” Cheney said in his remarks at Fudan, which were broadcast on China’s state-run television network.

“Because of the Pyongyang regime’s past history of irresponsibility and deceit, the removal of all its nuclear capabilities is absolutely essential to the peace and stability of Northeast Asia and the world,” he said.

North Korea agreed in 1994 to freeze and dismantle its efforts to build nuclear weapons in exchange for a program of economic aid from the U.S., Japan, South Korea and other countries. At the time, the CIA said the impoverished North had already produced enough plutonium for two nuclear bombs.

In the years that followed, U.S. and other intelligence agencies charged that North Korea was secretly violating the agreement -- among other things, by starting a second, clandestine program to produce weapons with highly enriched uranium even as it was showing U.N. inspectors the mothballed equipment from its plutonium-based program.

The argument escalated in 2002, when the U.S. slowed its aid shipments and Pyongyang renounced the 1994 agreement, declaring that it was restarting its plutonium production. At the same time, U.S. officials said North Korea officially acknowledged the existence of the uranium-based program. Pyongyang later denied making such an admission.

Since 2003, the United States has pushed the six-party talks in an effort to end the impasse. A key U.S. strategy in those talks has been to win support for its position from the other regional powers, especially China, North Korea’s most important economic supplier and the closest Pyongyang has to an ally.

U.S. officials believe that Cheney made headway in convincing China that the Bush administration is in no mood to compromise with the North Koreans. The Chinese were publicly silent on the issue; they now appear to face a choice of how hard to press Kim Jong Il, the reclusive North Korean leader, in response to Cheney’s direct requests.

The last round of six-party talks ended in Beijing in February without any breakthrough and the discussions are expected to reconvene this month or in May. Diplomats and Asia experts believe that North Korea is unlikely to agree to any deal before the U.S. presidential election in November, if only to see whether Democrat John F. Kerry wins the White House and adopts a different strategy.

But part of Cheney’s message was that the election should not serve as an excuse for other parties to ease up on Pyongyang.

“We’ll continue to ... do our level best to achieve this objective by diplomatic means and through negotiations,” Cheney said. “But it is important that we make progress.”

“Given the sad state of their economy, [the North Koreans] obviously need outside support,” Cheney said. “In order simply for that regime to survive, they must understand that no one in the region wants them to develop those weapons.”

In South Korea, Cheney held two back-to-back meetings with the country’s acting president, Goh Kun -- first in Goh’s original capacity as prime minister, and second in his current role.

The elected president, Roh Moo Hyun, has been suspended from his job since the conservative majority in the National Assembly voted to impeach him March 12. But Roh is expected to win reinstatement from the Constitutional Court.

Though Cheney would have liked to have met with Roh, U.S. officials said his “suspended” status made that impossible -- a dilemma one senior official called, with understatement, “rather awkward.”

Cheney wanted to press Roh on the North Korea issue in the same way he pressed leaders in China and Japan. The South Korean president has already distanced himself from the tough U.S. negotiating position and the election returns may encourage him to move even further toward peaceful coexistence and dialogue with the North.

In his meeting with Goh, Cheney thanked South Korea for sending 600 military engineers and medics to Iraq, and encouraged Seoul to follow through on plans to send 3,000 more troops.

A South Korean government advisor, who asked not to be quoted by name, said Goh would reassure Cheney that Seoul’s commitment to send more troops to Iraq remained firm.

Times staff writer Barbara Demick contributed to this report.