Can a 'Perry process' defuse North Korea?

Yoichi Funabashi, The Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo

The time is not yet ripe for creative initiatives such as Carter diplomacy and the Perry process.

I recently interviewed Stanford University professor William Perry, who served as former United States President Bill Clinton's secretary of defense.

Soon after leaving as defense secretary in 1997, he was put in charge of dealing with the North Korean missile crisis as the Clinton administration's North Korean policy coordinator. He led difficult negotiations and advanced the "Perry process" to stabilize U.S.-North Korea relations. On the wall of his office hangs framed "words of appreciation" from bipartisan members of Congress.

Four years later, we are facing another nuclear crisis over North Korea's secret nuclear development program using enriched uranium. What is the aim of the North's nuclear program?

"We can't be sure of what their intentions are," Perry said, "but I think ... they are seriously pursuing a nuclear weapon program. That is, they are seriously heading toward becoming a declared nuclear state, which could include nuclear testing and would include the serial production of nuclear weapons." Over and above this, he added, North Korea may seek to emulate Pakistan.

As far as North Korea's clandestine nuclear program is concerned, it appears Perry was also left in the dark. He said he wasn't aware of such information while he was policy coordinator. The U.S. side, Perry says, always suspected North Korea was doing something behind their back, and once went as far as carrying out an inspection in the mountains (of Kumchangri), though to no avail.

It is difficult to conceal the plutonium project because of the huge facilities required. But such is not the case with enriched uranium, which doesn't require such facilities. Perry also noted, "... it is possible that in the first few years it simply was an experimentary laboratory program, and that the decision to go into production on it has happened only recently."

If nothing is done to contain the situation, it could develop into a military conflict.

Perry stressed that the U.S. must immediately begin serious dialogue with North Korea to settle the nuclear problem. Although a solution may be a long time in coming, he said, North Korea should freeze its nuclear program and the U.S. should refrain from taking military action.

The administration of George W. Bush maintains the problem should be discussed in a multilateral forum, not simply bilateral talks between the U.S. and North Korea, since the issue concerns international society as a whole.

Perry, however, said the U.S. should not hold to such a stance. The Bush administration is demanding that North Korea give up its nuclear development program "immediately, transparently and completely." But Perry believes that may be difficult and advocates a more realistic approach, such as asking for a North Korean promise to "freeze" nuclear development.

Perry also objected to the argument within the Bush administration to abolish the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO).

Spawned after the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Framework Agreement, KEDO is a multilateral project to help boost North Korea's energy supply that took off under the joint initiative of Japan, the U.S. and South Korea. In exchange for removing a nuclear threat, the project promises to provide North Korea with light-water nuclear reactors.

In short, the aim of KEDO is to neutralize a nuclear threat with nuclear energy. Under the agreement, the U.S. was obliged to provide North Korea with heavy oil during the construction of the reactors, but it recently cut off shipments.

Perry said that was a mistake. The termination of heavy oil supply, he said, aggravated the nuclear crisis and gave North Korea an excuse to resume nuclear development.

It is better to keep KEDO intact as a forum to encourage U.S.- North Korea dialogue, Perry argues. In the future, however, it would be more reasonable to convert KEDO into a supply source of non-nuclear, rather than nuclear, energy, he said.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's visit to Pyongyang eventually led to the settlement of the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis. Can a similar approach be taken again to bring the situation under control?

Carter played a useful role, Perry said. But his success owed to the firm stand of the U.S. government, which showed its readiness to take military action as a last resort, Perry contends. The U.S. dispatched aircraft carriers to surrounding waters and deployed Patriot missiles to South Korea. The Japanese prime minister allowed the use of U.S. military bases in Japan should force have proved necessary.

Carter diplomacy, Perry said, was effective because Japan, the U.S. and South Korea cooperated. At that time, the U.S. refrained from harshly threatening North Korea. Diplomacy sometimes requires "a little coercion, a little threat of military force." At the same time, Perry stressed, it also requires creativity.

The U.S. government is too obsessed with preparing for an Iraqi attack to seriously deal with North Korea's nuclear threat. Its diplomacy lacks both coercion and creativity. I ended the interview feeling vexed that the time is not yet ripe for creative initiatives such as Carter diplomacy and the Perry process.

Soon after my meeting with Perry, I was told by a Chinese Communist Party diplomatic source that he recently obtained "reliable information from a North Korean source."

According to the source, "If the Bush administration plans to send either Carter or Perry as a special envoy to North Korea, Pyongyang is willing to meet him."