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| Robert Gallucci |
The United States should open dialogue with North Korea because ignoring the communist regime would only make the already bad situation worse, a former top American nuclear negotiator with Pyongyang said.
Robert Gallucci, who defused the first North Korean nuclear crisis by negotiating the 1994 Agreed Framework deal with Pyongyang, also said in an exclusive interview with Yonhap News Agency that he is willing to play a role in helping resolve the standoff if asked by the U.S. government.
"The North Korean issue, shorthanded, doesn't get better like fine wine, (with) the passage of time," Gallucci said. "It gets worse. With each passing year the North accumulated more highly enriched uranium, we presume, more plutonium, develops more sophisticated delivery vehicles, probably more sophisticated nuclear weapons."
The 1994 deal committed North Korea to freezing and ultimately dismantling its nuclear program in exchange for two proliferation-resistant light water reactors for power generation, and normalization of relations with the United States.
But the landmark agreement fell apart with the second nuclear crisis in late 2002, with revelations that Pyongyang had pursued a clandestine uranium enrichment program. Six-party talks were then launched in 2003 to defuse the crisis, but the standoff is still ongoing.
"I did not regard the Agreed Framework as perfect ... But it was a very good start so that when the framework fell apart... I was disappointed and concerned that there was nothing in place to constrain the North Koreans," he said in the interview held this past week.
"As we are at the anniversary almost of the Agreed Framework I regret that we do not have a framework or a structure in place to manage the disagreements on the peninsula," he said, referring to the 20th anniversary of the agreement this year.
The six-party talks, which bring together the U.S., North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia, have been stalled since the last meeting in late 2008. The North has called for unconditional resumption of the negotiations, but Washington and Seoul demand Pyongyang take concrete steps demonstrating its denuclearization commitment.
That stance reflects deep skepticism the U.S. and the South have about North Korea, a country that has a track record of starting a crisis, coming to negotiations and reaching an agreement in exchange for economic and other concessions, before ditching the deal.
Critics of negotiations with the North say Pyongyang has no intention to give up its nuclear program and holding dialogue with the regime would amount to rewarding the North's bad behavior. Still, Gallucci said there should be negotiations.
"The North Koreans ... do not want to be ignored and when they think they're ignored, they will do something to get your attention in the South or our attention. We shouldn't try to deal with the North Korean case by ignoring it," he said.
"Doing nothing about North Korea (is untenable), not only because while you're doing nothing they will be building stuff, but also it's not a responsible way to deal with a situation like the North Korean state," he added.
Gallucci also said sanctions are not a good idea to deal with North Korea because China, which has an interest in not seeing the North Korean regime collapse, will intervene. "The regime in the North has very high tolerance for pain suffered by its people. These are not very nice people," he said.
Last September, Gallucci and Stephen Bosworth, a former special U.S. representative for North Korea policy, held a meeting with North Korean officials in Berlin. The North Koreans repeated their calls for talks without any conditions, he said.
Before coming to the meeting, Gallucci said, he met with Amb. Glyn Davies, special representative for North Korea policy, and Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel, and relayed the American position to the North Koreans that Pyongyang should take steps demonstrating its seriousness.
The North Koreans insisted they can't make concessions before negotiations begin, he said.
Gallucci said, however, he believes the two sides can bridge the gap.
"The U.S. could say they'll have pre-talks, but not the real talks, pre-talks. They don't require proof of sincerity. We could say that. The North could say, OK, here's Kenneth Bae," he said, suggesting the North could release a Korean-American citizen being held in the communist nation in return.
The former negotiator said he has received invitations from the North through nongovernmental organizations to come and visit the country, but didn't accept the invitations because he did not "want to get in the way."
Still, Gallucci said he is willing to play a role if his government asks for it.
"If the U.S. government ever said we would like you to do something, I would do it, probably," he said. (Yonhap)
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