[From NYT] Bush tells Seoul talks with North won`t resume now

President Bush told President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea today that he would not resume missile talks with North Korea anytime soon, putting aside the Clinton administration`s two-year campaign for a deal and the eventual normalization of relations with the reclusive Communist state.

Mr. Bush`s comments, while couched in reassuring statements about the American alliance with South Korea, came as a clear rebuff to President Kim. Awarded last year`s Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to open dialogue across one of the most heavily armed borders on earth, the South Korean leader has told American officials that he believes there is only a narrow window of opportunity to seize on North Korea`s recent willingness to emerge from its diplomatic seclusion.

Just days before President Kim arrived, one of his top advisers said in an interview that "timing is critical" and expressed concern that North Korea might retreat to its hard-line positions if it concluded that the new administration in Washington was not willing to pick up where Mr. Clinton ? who was planning a last-minute trip to North Korea ? left off.

Today Mr. Bush made it clear that he had little intention of following Mr. Clinton`s path, at least not now. In a brief exchange with reporters after meeting Mr. Kim in the Oval Office, Mr. Bush said: "We`re not certain as to whether or not they`re keeping all terms of all agreements."

But the United States has only one agreement with North Korea ? the 1994 accord that froze North Korea`s plutonium processing at a suspected nuclear weapons plant. And at a briefing this afternoon two senior administration officials, asked about the president`s statement, said there was no evidence that North Korea is violating its terms.

Later, a White House spokesman said that Mr. Bush was referring to his concern about whether the North would comply with future accords, even though he did not use the future tense. "That`s how the president speaks," the official said.

Mr. Bush had said, "When you make an agreement with a country that is secretive, how are you aware as to whether or not they are keeping the terms of the agreement?"

The White House insisted that today`s meeting was cordial, and said that Mr. Bush embraced Mr. Kim`s "vision of peace on the Korean Peninsula." But they also distanced Mr. Bush from the details of that vision, including Mr. Kim`s statements, outside the meeting today, that he plans to sign a peace "declaration" with North Korea if its leader, Kim Jong Il, visits Seoul this spring.

American officials said that President Kim Dae Jung made no specific references to those plans today. But he did promise, during the brief encounter with reporters, that "we will consult with the United States every step of the way."

Nonetheless, Mr. Kim, sitting next to Mr. Bush in the Oval Office, offered a tepid assessment of his conversation with the American president. "The greatest outcome today has to be that, through a frank and honest exchange of views on the situation on the Korean Peninsula, we have increased the mutual understanding," Mr. Kim said, using a phrase often used in diplomacy to skim past substantive disagreement.

He added later that President Bush, who has visited Asia only once, a trip to China a quarter-century ago, "was very frank and honest in sharing with me his perceptions about the nature of North Korea and the North Korean leader."

President Kim had dinner tonight with about 20 American experts on Korea and, according to one participant, basically said that President Bush was very, very suspicious of the North Koreans. But Mr. Kim told the group that Mr. Bush did nothing to discourage a second North Korea- South Korea summit meeting, and he expressed concern at the dinner that the American news media would focus on the differences between Seoul and Washington rather than the strength of their alliance.

Mr. Kim also used the dinner to sound a more cautious note about North Korea than he has in recent weeks, emphasizing, as Mr. Bush did, the need for a way to verify any future agreements.

In another sign of Washington`s new, harder line toward North Korea, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell appeared to back away from his statements on Tuesday that he hoped to "pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off." His comments seemed at odds with those of a senior administration official who had invited a group of reporters to the White House that same day to stress that a complete review of North Korea policy was under way.

Today General Powell stepped out of the Oval Office meeting to tell reporters that North Korea was "a threat" and "we have to not be naive about the nature of this threat, but at the same time realize that changes are taking place."

"There are suggestions that there are imminent negotiations about to take place" between the United States and North Korea, General Powell added. "That is not the case."

That is a political blow to Mr. Kim, who has hoped to leverage his status as a Nobel laureate and his long history as South Korea`s most prominent dissident voice during a series of military governments to negotiate a broad peace on the Korean Peninsula.

But he knows that he has little time. Mr. Kim has less than two years left in office, not long to put together all the moving parts of a deal: An agreement to stop North Korea`s missile and nuclear programs, a pullback from the Demilitarized Zone, and full commercial interactions between the two Koreas.

Even as Mr. Kim`s international stature has grown, his influence in Seoul is ebbing. After presiding over South Korea`s revival from the Asian economic crisis, he has seen country`s economy once again decline. Opposition leaders, including his predecessor, Kim Young Sam, have charged him with naivete in dealing with the North.

Mr. Bush`s new administration is struggling to bridge differences within the Republican Party over how to deal with the North Korean threat.

Conservatives in the party have long been critical of the 1994 "Agreed Framework," struck by the Clinton administration after a confrontation over nuclear inspections.

Under the agreement, North Korea froze its nuclear-processing operations, and international inspectors regularly monitor compliance. But conservatives and other critics say that the West essentially gave in to blackmail, offering to build two nuclear power plants for the North and supply it with fuel oil until construction is completed. Mr. Bush`s aides have said they will respect the deal, but some want to reopen it, in hopes of replacing the two plants with coal-fired generators that would not create more nuclear waste.

Mr. Kim, meanwhile, has been pursuing a North-South agreement, mindful that he cannot get too far ahead of his American ally. But his philosophy differs sharply from Mr. Bush`s. He believes that the major problem with North Korea is that it is an insecure regime, and that he must change the atmosphere of confrontation.

"I think Kim is correct that the window is narrow," Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said this evening. "I don`t know whether what`s on the other side of the window is worth it, but we sure should go and look."

(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/08/world/08KORE.html?searchpv=nytToday)