“美, 새 대북 접근법 검토” (연합뉴스&뉴욕 타임즈, 2006. 5.18)

“美, 새 대북 접근법 검토”

미국은 북핵문제 해결을 위한 6자회담과 함께 평화협정 체결을 동시에 논의하는 광범위한 새 대북 접근법을 검토 중이라고 뉴욕 타임스 인터넷판이 18일 미 정부 고위 관리와 아시아 외교관들을 인용해 보도했다.

조지 부시 미국 대통령은 고위 보좌관들로부터 이 같은 새 접근법에 대한 건의를 받았으며 북한이 6자회담에 복귀한다면 이를 승인할 가능성이 아주 높은 것으로 보인다고 신문은 전했다.

새 접근법은 콘돌리자 라이스 국무장관과 최측근인 필립 젤리코 자문관에 의해 추진됐으며, 부시 대통령과 딕 체니 부통령까지 포함하는 일련의 토론을 유발한 것으로 전해졌다.

최근의 내부 토론에 참여한 한 관리는 부시 행정부내의 많은 사람들이 북한 핵문제의 정면 해결은 너무 어렵다는 결론에 도달했으며, 53년간의 전쟁 상태 지속을 끝내는 게 문제 해결에 도움이 될 지 모른다고 지적했다.

백악관 보좌관들은 공식 평화협정 협상에는 남.북한과 미국, 중국이 참여하며, 6자회담 당사국 중 일본과 러시아는 제외한다는 구상인 것으로 신문은 전했다.

하지만 북한이 새로운 논의에 응할 지 여부는 분명하지 않으며, 특히 부시 행정부가 포괄적 논의에 포함시키겠다고 주장해온 정치 변화나 인권, 테러리즘, 개방 등의 의제가 여기에 들어갈 경우 더욱 불투명한 것으로 관측된다.

북한은 미국의 대북 금융제재를 이유로 6자회담에 응하지 않고 있으나 미 관리들은 평화협정 협상이 시작되더라도 그같은 제재는 계속될 것이라고 강조했다.

부시 행정부내의 대북 강경입장을 주도해온 체니 부통령이 국무부가 입안한 새접근법에 대해 어떤 입장을 갖고 있는 지도 불투명한 것으로 전해졌다.

북한은 1953년 체결된 정전협정을 평화협정으로 대체할 것을 줄곧 주장해왔으며, 부시 대통령이 새 접근법을 승인할 경우 이는 중대한 대북 전술의 변화로 풀이된다고 기사를 쓴 데이비드 생어 기자는 지적했다.

부시 대통령은 취임 이후 북한이 핵프로그램을 전면 폐기하지 않는 한 경제 외교적 고립을 풀지 않을 것이라고 다짐했으나, 이후 의미있는 핵폐기가 이뤄진다면 일부 보상이 시작될 수 있다는 쪽으로 입장을 완화했으며 이는 또다른 변화라는 것.

미국 정부의 새 대북 접근법 검토는 점증하는 이란 핵문제에 대한 우려에 부분적으로 영향받은 것으로도 그는 풀이했다.

한 아시아 고위 관리는 “북한을 외부 압력에도 ‘노’라고 할 수 있는, 이란이 되고 싶어하는 모델로 그대로 둘 수 없다는 정서가 있다”고 말했다.

부시 행정부의 대다수 고위 관리들은 부시 대통령 임기내에 북한이 핵프로그램을 폐기하거나 붕괴할 것이라는 희망을 거의 포기했으며, 미국 정부의 대북 고립 노력에도 불구하고 대규모 지원을 계속해온 한국과 중국을 점차 비난하고 있다고 생어기자는 설명했다.

부시 대통령은 집권 1기 때는 북한 핵을 결코 용납하지 않을 것이라고 거듭 주장했으나 이제는 북핵에 대해서는 거의 언급하지 않고 있으며, 대신 집무실에서 탈북자들을 만나 북한 수용소나 주민들의 어려움을 거론하는 계기로 삼고 있다고 그는 지적했다.

이와 관련, 헨리 키신저 전 국무장관은 최근 워싱턴 포스트 기고를 통해 부시 대통령이 체제변화에 초점을 맞춤으로써 북핵 문제의 해결을 혼란스럽게 하고 있다며, 북핵 협상에는 고위층의 지속적인 관여가 필요함을 강조했다.

백악관 국가안보회의 대변인과 숀 매코맥 국무부 대변인은 새 대북 접근법 검토에 대한 논평을 회피했다.

May 18, 2006

U.S. Said to Weigh a New Approach on North Korea

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, May 17 — President Bush’s top advisers have recommended a broad new approach to dealing with North Korea that would include beginning negotiations on a peace treaty, even while efforts to dismantle the country’s nuclear program are still under way, senior administration officials and Asian diplomats say.

Aides say Mr. Bush is very likely to approve the new approach, which has been hotly debated among different factions within the administration. But he will not do so unless North Korea returns to multinational negotiations over its nuclear program. The talks have been stalled since September.

North Koreans have long demanded a peace treaty, which would replace the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War.

For several years after he first took office, Mr. Bush vowed not to end North Korea’s economic and diplomatic isolation until it entirely dismantled its nuclear program. That stance later softened, and the administration said some benefits to North Korea could begin to flow as significant dismantlement took place. Now, if the president allows talks about a peace treaty to take place on a parallel track with six-nation talks on disarmament, it will signal another major change of tactics.

The decision to consider a change may have been influenced in part by growing concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. One senior Asian official who has been briefed on the administration’s discussions about what to do next said, “There is a sense that they can’t leave Korea out there as a model for what the Iranians hope to become — a nuclear state that can say no to outside pressure.”

But it is far from clear that North Korea would engage in any new discussions, especially if they included talk of political change, human rights, terrorism and an opening of the country, topics that the Bush administration has insisted would have to be part of any comprehensive discussions with North Korea.

With the war in Iraq and the nuclear dispute with Iran as distractions, many top officials have all but given up hope that North Korea’s government will either disarm or collapse during Mr. Bush’s remaining time in office. Increasingly, they blame two of Mr. Bush’s negotiating partners, South Korea and China, which have poured aid into North Korea even while the United States has tried to cut off its major sources of revenue.

In his first term, Mr. Bush said repeatedly that he would never “tolerate” a nuclear North Korea. Now he rarely discusses the country’s suspected weapons. Instead, he has met in the Oval Office with escapees from the country and used the events to discuss North Korea’s prison camps and the suffering of its people.

Mr. Bush has also been under subtle pressure to change the first-term talk of speeding change of government. “Focusing on regime change as the road to denuclearization confuses the issue,” former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger wrote in a lengthy op-ed article that appeared in The Washington Post on Tuesday. Noting that the negotiations have been conducted by Christopher R. Hill, a seasoned diplomat who played a major role in the Dayton peace accords, which halted the civil war in Bosnia, he said, “Periodic engagement at a higher level is needed.”

A classified National Intelligence Estimate on North Korea, which was circulated among senior officials earlier this year, concluded that the North had probably fabricated the fuel for more than a half-dozen nuclear weapons since the beginning of Mr. Bush’s administration and was continuing to produce roughly a bomb’s worth of new plutonium each year. But in a show of caution after the discovery of intelligence flaws in Iraq, the assessment left unclear whether North Korea had actually turned that fuel into weapons.

With the six-nation negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program appearing to go nowhere, the drive for a broader strategy was propelled by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and one of her top aides, Philip D. Zelikow, who drafted two papers describing the new approach.

Those papers touched off what one senior official called “a blizzard of debate” over the next steps that eventually included Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been widely described by current and former officials as leading the drive in Mr. Bush’s first term to make sure the North Korean government received no concessions from the United States until all of its weapons and weapons sites were taken apart. It is unclear where Mr. Cheney stands on the new approach that emerged from the State Department.

Now, said one official who has participated in the recent internal debate, “I think it is fair to say that many in the administration have come to the conclusion that dealing head-on with the nuclear problem is simply too difficult.”

The official added, “So the question is whether it would help to try to end the perpetual state of war” that has existed, at least on paper, for 53 years. “It may be another way to get there.”

An agreement that was signed in September by North Korea and the five other nations involved in the talks — the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia — commits the country to give up its weapons and rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty “at an early date” but leaves completely unclear what would have to come first: disarmament or a series of steps that would aid North Korea.

It also included a sentence that paves the way for the initiative recommended to Mr. Bush, declaring that “the directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum.” But it does not specify what steps North Korea would have to take first.

As described by administration officials, none of whom would speak on the record about deliberations inside the White House, Mr. Bush’s aides envision starting negotiations over a formal peace treaty that would include the original signatories of the armistice — China, North Korea and the United States, which signed on behalf of the United Nations. They would also add South Korea, now the world’s 11th-largest economy, which declined to sign the original armistice.

Japan, Korea’s colonial ruler in the first half of the 20th century, would be excluded, as would Russia.

A National Security Council spokesman declined to comment on any internal deliberations on North Korea policy and referred all questions to the State Department, which has handled the negotiations with the North. The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, declined to discuss the recommendations made to Mr. Bush and said, “The most important decision is with North Korea — and that is the strategic decision to give up their nuclear weapons program.”

“They signed a joint statement,” he added, “but they have yet to demonstrate that they have made a decision to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.”

In justifying its refusal to return to talks, North Korea has complained bitterly about the financial sanctions imposed by the United States, which have been aimed at closing down the North’s banking activities in Macao and elsewhere in Asia. The United States has described those steps as “defensive measures” intended to stop the country from counterfeiting American currency and exporting drugs and missiles.

Even if peace treaty talks started, officials insisted, those sanctions would continue. A month ago, Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, told a small audience of foreign policy experts that the sanctions were “the first thing we have done that has gotten their attention,” several participants in the meeting said.

Some intelligence officials say they believe the protests may have arisen in part because they affected a secretive operation in North Korea called Unit 39 that finances the personal activities of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, providing the money he spends for his entertainment and to win the loyalty of others in the leadership.

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