Citation is:

N. Korea, U.S. Gave Ground to Make Deal
Long Process Looms On Nuclear Accord

By Glenn Kessler and Edward Cody

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, September 20, 2005; A01

Find the full text at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091900565.html

It's one of those weird, papering-over-the-differences agreements where everybody seems to read the document as they see fit.

North Korea signs a document that says--in effect--it's willing to negotiate its nuclear arms program away. There is no agreement, just that statement of willingness to negotiate one. All this means is that, for now, North Korea has abandoned its pledge never to give up its program. That's it.

North Korea still wants a light nuclear reactor, and we've given up our demand that they give up that demand. If a deal is struck, North Korea agrees to abandon its programs and allow inspections, and rejoin the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But that's if a deal is struck. All sides say any deal would require lengthy negotiations, during which I'm not seeing any pledge by North Korea to abandon anything.

As far as I can see, Pyongyang and Beijing have successfully taken the issue of America's unhappiness with North Korea's pursuit of WMD off the table by getting North Korea to sign a piece of paper saying that someday--under the right conditions--they might sign a piece of paper promising the Americans what they want.

In my mind, this is the Bush Administration saying, "We're tied down in the Middle East and cannot try anything beyond temporizing the situation in North Korea." In effect, they punted on the issue for the rest of the term.

In an immediate demonstration of the difficulty ahead, the official North Korean news agency early today quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman as asserting that Pyongyang would not give up its weapons program until it received nuclear reactors from the United States. A State Department official shrugged off the statement, saying the focus would remain on the Beijing declaration . . .

Several key issues were deferred or avoided through diplomatic sleight of hand, such as the Bush administration's demand that North Korea admit the existence of the uranium project. The agreement contained no clear timeline for when the North would give up its nuclear programs, or how . . .

For the Bush administration, analysts said, the agreement was welcome at a time when the war in Iraq has lost support at home and negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programs have sputtered. In addition, the president's approval ratings are low in the wake of his administration's response to Hurricane Katrina . . .

An expert on North Korean military matters is quoted in the piece as saying:

"It's an all-front crisis for the Bush administration . . . I think they thought, hey, North Korea is a small country and maybe we can handle it if we put it to the side for a while."

But in the end, this arms expert said she didn't expect North Korea to give up the arms program--ever. She called it "its platinum trump card."

What are we seeing in this agreement? It's not just the rest of the world that's already begun discounting the remainder of the Bush Administration. Now, the State Department is doing it as well. This process will only pick up momentum in coming months, as the world plans increasingly for what comes after Bush.

Listen to how the NYT describes the dynamics of the deal-making (September 20, 2005, "U.S.-Korean Deal on Arms Leaves Key Points Open," By JOSEPH KAHN and DAVID E. SANGER):

All day Monday, Washington time, the Bush administration said the only appropriate time would be well after North Korea dismantled all its nuclear facilities and allowed highly intrusive inspections of the country. On Monday evening, less than 24 hours after the deal was signed, North Korea declared that the United States "should not even dream" that it would dismantle its nuclear weapons before it receives a new nuclear plant.

As described by senior Bush administration officials and Asian participants in the talks, Mr. Bush agreed to eventual discussions on providing a nuclear plant only after China turned over a draft of an agreement and told the Americans they had hours to decide whether to take it or leave it.

The North Koreans, dependent on China for food and oil, were unhappy but ready to sign. "They said, 'Here's the text, and we're not going to change it, and we suggest you don't walk away,' " said one senior American official at the center of the debate.

Several officials, who would not allow their names to be used because they did not want to publicly discuss Mr. Bush's political challenges, noted that Mr. Bush is tied down in Iraq, consumed by Hurricane Katrina, and headed into another standoff over Iran's nuclear program. The agreement, they said, provides him with a way to forestall, at least for now, a confrontation with another member of what he once famously termed "the axis of evil."

So after two days of debates that reached from Mr. Bush's cabin in Camp David to Condoleezza Rice's suite at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York to Tokyo, Moscow and Seoul, Mr. Bush gave the go-ahead on Sunday evening, once he had returned to the White House, to signing a preliminary accord with Kim Jong Il, a leader he has said he detests.

Had he decided to let the deal fall through, participants in the talks from several countries said, China was prepared to blame the United States for missing a chance to bring a diplomatic end to the confrontation.

The debate over signing the agreement reflected the fact that the North Koreans drove a tough bargain.

Hear that? The North Koreans drove a tough bargain. That's what screwing up the Iraq occupation has gotten this White House: now it's Pyongyang that drives tough bargains.

You may ask, Does this change my thinking on North Korea or "locking in China at today's prices"? Not at all. The WMD issue was never at the center of that discussion for me, just as it never was for Saddam. We still need an East Asian NATO. We still need strategic alliance with China. We still need Kim gone and North Korea reabsorbed.

This agreement simply says the Bush Administration is passing on these goals in the second administration, and everybody in Asia is more than willing to go along with it on this, because over time all of their situations improve while our strategic position deteriorates.

This is yet another example of how our poor SysAdmin effort in Iraq haunts the entirety of our foreign policy. Building the SysAdmin function is how we avoid such pathways and limitations in the future.

And don't think that Katrina wasn't a serious tipping point here, because it was. Bush has already begun his post-presidency.