YOKOSUKA, Japan, 21 October 2004 — After three rounds of talks among China, South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea), it appears there will be no additional meetings until after the Nov. 2 elections in the US. Although, North Korea denies it has any interest in who is elected president of the US, its strained relations with Washington definitely proves otherwise. The National Security Archive released a number of documents in 2003 including declassified intelligence assessments regarding North Korea and these together with an interview with Charles W. Freeman prove that North Korea’s concerns about dealing with the Bush administration are valid.
Freeman was the deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Beijing during the Reagan administration twenty years ago. He was widely considered an expert on Asian affairs and he worked closely with China and South Korea in an effort to keep the young country of North Korea in harmony with the rest of the region. At that time North Korea was under the leadership of Kim Jon Ill’s father Kim Ill Sung.
According to Freeman, during Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger’s historic visit to China in 1983, the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping actually proposed to Weinberger that he could open the door to North Korea by hosting a meeting with the US, South Korea and North Korea. This was a bombshell with implications that could have been far reaching. However, when the US Embassy personnel including Freeman reported this offer by cable to Washington D.C., they found it had been altered and their own creditability questioned. The assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs at that time was Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz edited the offer in the embassy’s cable and claimed that he hadn’t heard any such thing from the Chinese. He went on to say that the embassy personnel were putting words in Deng’s mouth.
The following year, President Reagan and his Secretary of State George Shultz visited China. The Chinese again raised the issue of opening up conversations with North Korea. Shultz discussed this idea with US Ambassador Art Hummel. However, according to Freeman, by the time the secretary of state reached Seoul, Paul Wolfowitz had convinced him otherwise. Then someone leaked to the Periscope section of Newsweek that Ambassador Hummel was trying to manipulate George Shultz on the Korean issue. It was the opinion of Freeman that Paul Wolfowitz was determined to see that no meeting between China, North Korea and the United States took place. When asked why he thought Wolfowitz took this position, he said, “First of all, Mr. Wolfowitz took a very jaundiced, rather ideological view of China and was inherently suspicious of any initiative that originated with the Chinese. Second, with regard to contacts with North Korea, he was apprehensive about the political reaction from the Republican right, which he has courted and from association with which he has benefited and that therefore he saw such a development as politically unattractive”.
The net result of this is that a crucial meeting with China, the US and North Korea did not take place. The benefits that could have resulted from such a meeting are vast including the opportunity for an open dialogue with Kim Ill Sung. In that case the nuclear weapons would not have fallen into the hands of Kim Jong.
Yet, it is too late to look back and think of what might have been. But to remember these things is important because Paul Wolfowitz as the deputy secretary of defense is even now in a position where his attitudes and opinions have great impact on US foreign policy. When President Bush took office in 2001 his administration began a review of North Korean policy. The discovery of North Korea’s uranium enrichment program in 2002 brought an end to open discussions and leading to a stalemate in relations between the two countries. President Bush’s inclusion of North Korea in his famous “Axis of Evil” speech did nothing to defuse the heightened tension. If George Bush is re-elected he needs to reconsider his approach to North Korea and perhaps to some of his advisors. This administration’s stand that they are not willing to be held up for “blackmail” is rather one— sided. The policy under the Clinton administration that balanced disarmament with food and fuel for North Korea made some sense. The United States has a wealth of competent, intelligent and impartial men and women who can and should be advising any president in regards to this dangerous issue. President Bush needs to evaluate his Department of Defense input against these experts. If North Korea gets the message that his approach is flexible then the lines of communication may really be opened.
— Adrienne McPhail is an American journalist located in Yokosuka, Japan. http://www.homepages.cybernet.it/worthington-agency/
