3RD LD: N. Korea wants compensation for ending missile exports

0 Comments | Asian Political News, July 17, 2000

KUALA LUMPUR, July 11 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH END OF TUESDAY'S TALKS)

The United States and North Korea ended the second of their three days of missile talks Tuesday with Pyongyang pressing its demand for compensation for lost earnings if it ceases exporting ballistic missiles.

"We discussed a lot on the export issue and we also discussed a lot on the compensation issue," Kim Myong Gil, counselor to North Korea's U.N. representative office in New York, told reporters after five hours of negotiations at the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

Describing the atmosphere as "very sincere," Kim said the two sides would continue negotiating the same issues on Wednesday, the final scheduled day of the long-stalled talks, which were last held in March 1999.

Kim told reporters earlier Tuesday that the two issues -- exports and compensation -- are "inseparable."

Aside from its concerns over North Korea's ballistic missile exports, Washington is pressing Pyongyang to cease production, testing, and deployment of ballistic missiles altogether.

North Korea, however, says it has a "legitimate right to self-defense" and to develop, test and produce such missiles, especially given the "threat" posed by the U.S. missile and nuclear arsenal.

The U.S. delegation is led by Robert Einhorn, assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, while his North Korean team is headed by Jang Chang Chon, director general for U.S. affairs at Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry.

During the previous four rounds of talks, Pyongyang similarly offered to end missile exports if the U.S. agreed to compensate it in hard currency for foregone earnings, as much as $1 billion over three years according to South Korean government sources.

Exports of missiles and missile technology have been a major source of hard currency for North Korea, which in recent years has suffered industrial and agricultural declines that have left it struggling to maintain its huge army.

Some U.S. officials, however, warn that "buying out" North Korea's ballistic missile program would only encourage Pyongyang to further "blackmail" and would prompt other countries to follow suit.

In any case, they say, such a strategy would not likely be supported by the U.S. Congress, which controls the U.S. government's purse strings.

Instead, Washington has recently come up with a new policy framework whereby it and its allies, namely South Korea and Japan, would relax military and economic pressures on North Korea in return for progress in curbing its nuclear and missile development programs.

Earlier Tuesday, Yonhap News Agency reported that, in a gesture aimed at further easing tension with North Korea, South Korea and the U.S. will likely scale down major defensive military exercises slated for August, one of several annual exercises that Pyongyang views as offensive in nature.

According to U.S. intelligence reports, North Korea's exports of ballistic missiles have significantly altered the strategic balances in the Middle East and Asia.

Having gone from reverse-engineering SCUD-B missiles to producing them in the early 1980s, North Korea has since established a broad-based missile industry, developing and producing a variety of missiles both for its own use and for export to countries such as Iran and Syria.

Some Middle Eastern countries have purchased Nodong medium-range missiles from North Korea, while Pakistan has produced the 1,300-kilometer medium-range Ghauri missile with North Korean help, the reports say.

Einhorn told reporters Monday that the backdrop for the current round, the fifth so far, was "positive" and "promising" in view of recent developments.

He cited last month's historic inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang, Washington's new U.S. policy framework and Pyongyang's having embarked on a policy of expanding contacts with the outside world.

The last round in March 1999 in Pyongyang was held amid still-simmering tensions over North Korea's having flight-tested a Taepodong-1 long-range missile over Japanese territory in August 1998, which prompted protests from Tokyo and Washington.

Last September, Pyongyang pledged to refrain from testing any more long-range missiles as long as high-level bilateral talks with the U.S. continue.

It reaffirmed that pledge on June 21, two days after Washington announced a partial lifting of 50-year-old economic sanctions against North Korea.

Pyongyang is currently developing the much more capable Taepodong-2, which could deliver a several hundred kilogram payload anywhere in the United States if developed into a three-stage missile.

But it accuses Washington of using the North Korean missile "threat" as a pretext to convince reluctant NATO allies to support its proposed missile shields, which nuclear powers China and Russia warn, if implemented, could upset the strategic balance and spark a new arms race.