By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 (Yonhap) -- Reforming North Korea would be difficult due to North Koreans' fears of a regime collapse, Ambassador Christopher Hill said Tuesday.

   The outgoing U.S. ambassador to Iraq was asked by Yonhap News Agency which nation is easier to deal with, North Korea or Iraq.

   "We know the Iraqis don't have nuclear weapons," Hill said. "It's a good thing. Probably Iraq is easier because at the end of the day what can you say about North Korea? You really can't ask them to reform because asking them to reform is asking them to be destroyed. So what will be the future there? Whereas, in Iraq, I can see the future."

   Hill, former head of the U.S. delegation to the six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, just concluded a year-long mission as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, concurrently ending 31 years of service as a career diplomat. He was U.S. ambassador to South Korea and the chief U.S. delegate to the multinational nuclear talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia.

   Hill said that Iraq "is increasingly stable" despite "scattered" suicide bomb attacks that have failed to "shake the political structures."

   He is to be replaced by James Jeffrey, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, as U.S. combat troops are gearing up to begin leaving Iraq this month.

   On the possibility of North Korea coming back to the six-party talks, Hill said, "I don't know. It's very difficult right now."

   North Korea has demanded sanctions be lifted and a separate dialogue begin for a peace treaty to replace the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War before resumption of the six-party talks. The last session was held in December 2008.

   The U.S. joins South Korea in refusing to return to the nuclear talks unless Pyongyang apologizes for the torpedoeing of the South Korean warship Cheonan and shows commitment to its denuclearization under a six-party deal signed in 2005.

   The North denies involvement in the Cheonan's sinking, which killed 46 sailors in the Yellow Sea in March, and threatens to retaliate against the ongoing South Korean-U.S. military drills, the second in a series planned by the allies as a show of force against further North Korean provocations.

   Hill, who will soon become dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, said he will visit Seoul for the Maeil Knowledge Forum on October 12.

   hdh@yna.co.kr
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