*EPF115 02/10/2003
Senior Officials Urge Permanent End to N. Korea Crisis
(Washington Post forum February 6) (560)

By Kristofer Angle
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- A panel of top government officials agreed that cosmetic solutions on the Korean peninsula are no longer an option.

"We're looking for something that will once and for all get the nuclear weapons issue off of the Korean peninsula," said James Kelly, assistant secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific affairs.

The panel, co-hosted by the Washington Post and South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo on February 6, brought together 17 experts on Korea. In addition to Kelly, among them were: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana), chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Senator John Rockefeller (D-West Virginia), member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and ranking member of the Select Committee on Intelligence; Donald Gregg, president of the Korea Society and former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea; Hong-Koo Lee, chairman of the Seoul Forum for International Affairs and former prime minister of the Republic of Korea; and Kyung-Won Kim, president of the Institute of Social Sciences and Seoul Forum and former South Korean national security advisor and ambassador to the United Nations.

The panel talked at length about the possibility of a regime change in North Korea, but there was no suggestion of the use of military force.

Kelly said: "We are still dedicated to a diplomatic solution. We're trying to avoid a crisis."

Kim said he was skeptical of the current emphasis on dialogue. "Talking, itself, will not have that much impact. What is important is the substance." Kim called for an intense inspection regime that is "more reliable and more thorough than what we had in the 1994 agreed framework."

He warned that intrusive inspections intended to rid North Korea of weapons of mass destruction would require significant incentives.

Wolfowitz said a nuclear-armed North Korea that has normal relations with the rest of the world is "not gonna happen."

Lugar, expressed hope that if and when North Korea clearly agrees to forgo its nuclear program that an enduring peace can prevail. If the North Koreans cooperate, he said, "the Congress of the United States can pass a non-aggression pact."

Rockefeller warned that ousting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il would be complicated. "I think if we're waiting for a regime to collapse, that's not going to happen. I think if the North Koreans have to pull in their belts another 2 or 3 inches, they will do that."

Rockefeller further described the North Korean state of affairs as a "major crisis." North Korea, he said, is in the midst of a prolonged and ruinous economic situation and seems fixed on clinging to what sources of power they have. Rockefeller said: "That's all they have. When you have [nuclear weapons] and others are scared of it that puts you at the center of the world's attention."

Wolfowitz also spoke of his sincere concern for the "true humanitarian catastrophe" in North Korea. He said that accepting large numbers North Korean refugees, similar to a mass humanitarian evacuation in Indochina about 20 years ago, was an idea the Bush administration would "take seriously."

An operation such as this, Wolfowitz explained, would be purely humanitarian and would be done with consideration to China.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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