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Obama urged to continue engaging N. Korea through 6-way talks: Scowcroft
By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, June 7 (Yonhap) -- The United States should continue engaging North Korea through six-party talks for its denuclearization and avoid a military option on the impoverished but nuclear-armed communist state, a former senior U.S. official said Monday.
"I don't see any reason to give up the six-party talks," said Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. "I am cautiously hopeful the U.S-Chinese cooperation on the six-party talks can produce success." | | Data picture |
Scowcroft made the remarks at a forum at the Foreign Press Center here as the multinational nuclear talks stalled over North Korea's torpedoing of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors.
Seoul has taken the issue to the U.N. Security Council and cut off ties with Pyongyang, saying it will not join the nuclear talks until North Korea is held duly accountable. Washington supports Seoul's position.
The nuclear talks have been on and off since their inception in 2003 and were held last in December 2008.
Scowcroft urged the Obama administration to avoid any military option on North Korea, despite its nuclear ambitions and continued provocations.
"Probably not," he said when asked if he would give the same advice to Obama as he did to the Bill Clinton administration, when he proposed that it attack North Korea's nuclear facilities in 1994. "That was a very different circumstance and very different time."
He said that what he suggested was to "take out the reprocessing plant," referring to one of the key facilities in the North linked to production of weapons-grade plutonium.
"That was not a war with North Korea, but simply to demonstrate we were serious about stopping their nuclear program," he said. "We moved a long way since then."
Scowcroft said China neither wants nuclear armed North Korea nor any instability in its communist neighbor.
"With a very unstable government and neighbors, especially China but also in part South Korea are very worried about the collapse of the system and what the consequences might be," he said. "I don't think China wants North Korea to have nuclear weapons. They are also very fearful about the collapse of North Korea due to millions of North Koreans flooding across the border into China. They are worried about what the ensuing political structure would be."
Noting the Korean Peninsula "has been the cause of great power conflict in the region over the last century," he said the Obama administration should not consider North Korea less important than the Iranian situation "because of North Korea's position in the world."
hdh@yna.co.kr
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