TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2010
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The World
North Korea makes gestures toward calm after South’s drills 6
BY JOHN POMFRET AND CHICO HARLAN
NorthKorea has told a visiting
American politician that it would allow international in- spectors to visit a newly unveiled uranium-enrichment facility and announcedMonday that itwould not “retaliate” against South Ko- rea for conductingmilitary exer- cises — gestures that seemed intended to calmtensions on the Korean Peninsula, at least for the time being. Ending a five-day visit to
Pyongyang,
NewMexicoGov.Bill Richardson (D) praised North Korea for reacting “in a states- manlike manner” to the South’s live-fire exercises and expressed hope that the North’s proposals would “signal a new chapter and a round of dialogue to lessen tension on the Korean Peninsu- la.”
At the State Department, the
reaction wasmore guarded. “If North Korea wants to reen-
gage with the [International AtomicEnergyAgency],wants to reintroduce inspectors into its facilities, that certainly would be a positive step,” State Depart- ment spokesman P.J. Crowley told a news briefing. “We’ll be guided by what North Korea does, not by what North Korea says it might do under certain circumstances.” North Korea ex- pelled IAEA inspectors in April 2009 before it conducted a sec- ond test of a nuclear device. South Korea’s military con-
ducted a 94-minute artillery drill on Yeonpyeong Island, which was subjected to deadly shelling by the North on Nov. 23. But it soon became clear that North Korea was not going to respond with “brutal consequences be- yond imagination” as it had earli- er threatened. On Monday evening, North
Korea’s state-run news agency said the SouthKorean drillswere “not worth” amilitary response. “The revolutionary armed
forces of the [Democratic Peo- ple’s Republic of Korea] did not feel any need to retaliate against every despicable military provo- cation,” the agency said, quoting a communique from the North’s Korean People’s Army Supreme Command that called the drills a “childish play with fire.” Richardson, upon leaving
Pyongyang after a visit he made as a private citizen but with the knowledge of the U.S. govern- ment, issued a statement saying North Korean officials had agreed to allow the IAEA to return to the Yongbyon nuclear facility, where last month it re- vealed a secret uranium-enrich- ment plant to a team of U.S. scientists and weapons experts. The enrichment facility, which would be an important link in building a nuclear bomb based on highly enriched uranium, sparked speculation that North Korea may have other such plants. North Korea also reiterated to
Richardson a proposal to sell fuel rods to a third party, such as South Korea. Radioactive mate- rial collected from fuel rods can be used to make plutonium- based nuclear weapons. “It is too early to make any
response to an informal sugges- tion by Richardson,” said Song Min-soon, former South Korean foreign minister and a current member of the National Assem- bly’s foreign affairs committee. “We don’t have the details, and North Korea always includes conditions on deals.Unless there is an official and concrete sug- gestion by North Korea, it is difficult tomake any responses.” While experts said they did
not believe the proposals would harken a return to negotiations aboutNorth Korea’s nuclear pro- gram, some predicted calm would return to the Korean Pen- insula for about a month — enough time to allow China’s president, Hu Jintao, to return home from a trip to Washington expected to take place in the latter half of January. Dai Bing- guo, a senior Chinese diplomat, traveled to North Korea on Dec. 9, and China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that Chi- na and North Korea had reached “consensus” on the situation on the peninsula — which many analysts interpreted to mean a North Korean agreement not to provoke SouthKorea in the short term. “The Chinese clearly had to
have something to do with it,” said Evan Feigenbaum, a George W. Bush administration State Department official now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Dai goes there and suddenly North Korea says, ‘We don’t need to respond.’ ” The United States has pressed
China to rein in North Korea for months, and recently a senior administration official, speaking
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on the condition of anonymity, accused China, which has tight- ened its ties with Pyongyang, of “enabling” North Korea’s provo- cations. North Korean forces are suspected of launching a deadly attack on a South Korean war- ship on March 26 that left 46 South Korean sailors dead. On Nov. 23 North Korean forces shelled Yeonpyeong, killing four people, in one of themost serious attacks on South Korean soil since the KoreanWar.
A second factor that adds to
the danger on the peninsula is the predicament faced by South Korea’s president, Lee Myung- bak. He has looked weak in the face of the North’s moves. His reaction to the sinking of the warship in March was deemed ineffectual, and his forces did little, if any, damage to theNorth during their November artillery duel. Following the firefight, Lee accepted the resignation of his defense minister and has vowed
a fierce response to future North Korean strikes. That has led to worries among
his U.S. interlocutors and offi- cials from other friendly coun- tries that Lee might lash out if provoked again. On Monday, South Korean
troops used K-9 self-propelled howitzers and Vulcan guns, among other weapons, during the drill. According to local me- dia accounts, all shots were fired in a southwest direction, while a
fleet of fighter jets conducted surveillance on the North Kore- an coast to deter a North Korean counterstrike. About 20 mem- bers of the U.S. military partici- pated in Monday’s drills. In all, more than 28,000 U.S. forces are based in South Korea.
pomfretj@washpost.com harlanc@washpost.com
Harlan reported from Seoul. Special correspondent Yoonjung Seo, also in Seoul, contributed to this report.
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washingtonpost.com Displays of power
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