U.S., North Korea resume talks

WASHINGTON - U.S. and North Korean negotiators met in New York yesterday for the first time in 16 months, resuming high-stakes talks that a jittery West hopes will rein in the hermit nation's growing missile development and export programs.

The two-day session comes just more than a month after the Communist regime surprised and angered its neighbors, as well as Washington, by launching a satellite that the United States initially believed to be a ballistic missile.

Although the solid-fueled third stage of the rocket failed and the small satellite payload was destroyed, the rocket flew in an arc over Japan, raising fears in Tokyo of unexpected military vulnerability.

"The three-stage (rocket) means they are much further along than we had thought, much further along," in efforts to build long-range missiles, a senior U.S. official warned.

He called the Pyongyang regime "the only government in the world that's truly dangerous" to world peace because of its known nuclear potential and immediate military threat to South Korea, where the United States maintains 37,000 troops.

The CIA has told Congress it did not foresee Pyongyang's ability to build a three-stage rocket and that it considers North Korea's missile-development program the most advanced of any hostile state, ahead of both Iran and Iraq.

In addition, CIA officials warned that later this year North Korea may test a Taepo Dong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile with a potential range of up to 3,600 miles - able to reach Alaska and Hawaii.

Intelligence officials also say North Korea earns desperately needed hard currency by selling an estimated $1 billion a year of ballistic-missile technology and equipment to such countries as Iran and Syria. Another past customer is Pakistan, which detonated several underground nuclear devices in May in response to similar tests by India.

The Aug. 31 launch by North Korea weakened already lukewarm congressional support for a landmark 1994 pact that essentially pays Pyongyang to stop producing plutonium, which can be used for nuclear weapons.

Under the so-called framework agreement, the United States promised to provide North Korea with 500,000 tons of fuel oil a year. South Korea and Japan agreed to pay the bulk of the estimated $4.5 billion for construction of two light-water nuclear power plants to replace North Korea's plutonium-producing reactors.

But, angered by the rocket launch as well as the recent discovery of a vast underground site in the North that U.S. intelligence officials believe is being used for nuclear weapons development, Congress has refused to appropriate any money for the program next year.

The White House insists that the 1994 pact is the only effective mechanism to restrain Pyongyang's nuclear program and warns that a failure to meet U.S. commitments could incite Kim Jong Il's regime to resume production of plutonium.

As a result, President Clinton used his executive authority Wednesday to shift $15 million from anti-terrorism, nonproliferation and other programs to a program to buy 150,000 tons of heavy fuel for North Korea. So far this year, North Korea has received 216,000 tons; a State Department spokesperson said the shortfall from the agreed-upon 500,000 tons was being met by shipments from other countries.

A U.S. team is heading to North Korea in coming weeks in an effort to gain access to the underground site where nuclear weapons development is suspected, a senior administration official said yesterday.

The missile talks in a mid-Manhattan office building are the first since June 1996, and the U.S. delegation was led by Assistant Secretary of State Robert Einhorn. The Korean group was led by Han Chang On, a U.S. expert in Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry.

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