Congressman renews call for U.S.-N.K. direct talks

A senior Republican congressman renewed his calls Tuesday for the United States to engage in direct talks with North Korea and give up the notion of a regime change in the closed communist nation.

Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, in a speech to the Arms Control Association, said talking face to face to Pyongyang "is neither a favor nor a capitulation."

"For us to remain diplomatically reactive, as in the case of North Korea, cedes too much initiative to actors whose interests are not identical with our own, and allows the North Koreans and others to bizarrely paint us as an intransigent party," he said.

Tuesday marks the first anniversary of a six-party joint statement under which Pyongyang committed to giving up its nuclear weapons and programs in return for political and economic benefits from other states.

South and North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan are the members of the talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

Pyongyang has since been boycotting the negotiations, demanding Washington first lift sanctions imposed on a Macau bank accused of laundering money for North Korea.

Pyongyang has also been seeking direct talks with Washington, inviting its chief nuclear negotiator, Christopher Hill, to travel to North Korea.

Leach took the idea further, proposing that President George W. Bush's father lead a U.S. delegation to Pyongyang.

"The goal should be to induce both a negotiating commitment and an attitudinal breakthrough," the congressman said.

He called hopes of a regime change in North Korea an "unrealistic assumption." "No Walesa or Havel is in evidence," he said, and instead encouraged evolutionary changes similar to the Vietnam model.

He also argued against further U.S. sanctions that would harm Washington's own national interests by distracting North Koreans and the world from the true impediment to nuclear negotiations, Pyongyang's obduracy.

"Such distractions only serve to impede trust and coordination with our principal partner in these efforts, South Korea," said Leach.

James Kelly, former assistant secretary of state and top U.S. envoy to the six-party talks, said it is China that has the tools for sanctions.

"It's not within the powers of the United States to do the sanctions," he said, "Sanctions begin and end with China."

Kelly stressed any decision or action by North Korea is motivated by regime survival.

North Korea is "just trying to maintain survival, not of the nation of 23 million people, but a group of somewhere between 250 and 1,000 elites that run that country," said Kelly.

"If leadership believes economic reforms would bring their immediate downfall, they will be reluctant to enter into that process," he said.

Daniel Poneman, previously with the National Security Council, said sanctions will not make North Korea give up its nuclear program.

"Sanctions are mechanisms of leverage to induce North Korea to return to the negotiation track, or they are a mechanism to build an international consensus to politically sustain an attack," he said.

He proposed an Iran package for North Korea, a process of consulting with regional allies and working out the clear upside and downside with a deadline. "Try the same with North Korea," he said.

Poneman also pointed to the urgency.

"Every day, they get a little better in nuclear capability, every day, they drive the price of any deal that ever gets cut a little higher, and every day we are less safe," he said.

"Every day with no fresh North Korean plutonium is a good day."

Washington, Sept. 19 (Yonhap News)