Hope, Despair Finger-Pointing Mark N. Korea Debate in U.S. House
By WILLIAM MATTHEWS

In the long run, the way to subdue nuclear-armed, bellicose North Korea is to let South Korea “absorb” the North economically, James Lilley told the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In the short term, though, “coercive diplomacy” should be used to dissuade North Korea from using its nuclear weapons or selling nuclear material to others, former Defense Secretary William Perry said.
A Jan. 18 hearing on North Korea featured a few rays of hope, general despair over years of lost opportunities and squabbling among committee Republicans and Democrats over which party is most responsible for failed policies that led to a North Korea with nuclear weapons.
The hope came from Lilley, who was U.S. ambassador to China from 1989 to 1991. He told the committee that although North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon, the test was “not very successful.” And although North Korea has demonstrated a handful of medium- and long-range missiles, the first long-range missile blew up in flight.
“They have serious limitations on their capabilities,” he said.
Moreover, economic development sponsored by South Korea and China is beginning to undermine North Korea’s communist system, Lilley said. But the “economic seduction” of North Korea will take a long time.
To keep North Korea from causing trouble in the short term, the United States should try to get South Korea and China to threaten to stop supplying North Korea with grain and fuel, Perry said.
Thus far, China and South Korea have refused to do so, but the danger of North Korea’s nuclear program should by now be obvious to them, and they should be more willing to join the United States in a diplomatic effort, he said.
But threatening North Korea is unlikely to work, Lilley said. North Korea can simply make a counterthreat: Feed North Koreans in North Korea, or feed them in China, he said. Cutting off food and fuel to North Korea would almost certainly result in a vast flood of refugees into China and South Korea.
Facing that, China would send grain, Lilley said.
For committee members, the hearing seemed more an opportunity to blame the other party for the current predicament than to find a way out of it.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said North Korea was able to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles because of failed Clinton administration policies.
Clintonites “rewarded North Korea” for violating agreements and ignored its human rights abuses, she said. Iran has learned lessons and adopted tactics from the North Koreans, she said.
Perry was Clinton’s defense secretary and a key policymaker on North Korea.
Committee Democrats countered that the Bush administration let matters deteriorate by refusing to talk with North Korea and issuing empty threats.
“Until recently, the administration seemed satisfied with sending an American delegation who read canned talking points instead of engaging in meaningful dialogue,” said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., the committee chairman.
“What is this administration afraid of? There is no harm in talking” to North Korea, said Rep. Eni Faleomavaega, D-American Samoa. The United States maintained a dialogue with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, he said.
‘We need more carrots and more sticks” to entice and threaten North Korea into halting its nuclear program, said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif. “And where do you go in this world when you need something? You go to China.”


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