(LEAD) U.S. supports Lee MB's plans to meet N. Korean leader Kim

(ATTN: UPDATES with more details, background throughout)
By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (Yonhap) -- The United States Friday expressed support for
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's plans to meet with North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il over the North's denuclearization.

"We strongly support President Lee and the very clear path he set forward about
what is necessary to achieve peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula," Deputy
Secretary of State James Steinberg told a forum here at the Woodrow Wilson
Center. "I am confident whatever form of engagement the South Korean government
achieves, we will do this through close cooperation."
Steinberg was responding to Lee's announcement earlier in the day that he is
ready to meet with Kim this year to help resolve the North Korean nuclear impasse
and other issues.
"We will be very supportive of the measures President Lee takes because we know
that we are pursuing the same goal," Steinberg said, noting both sides seek the
North's "complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization."
In an interview with the BBC, Lee said that the North should not set any
preconditions for the summit.
Lee has said that he will not meet with Kim unless the North Korean leader agrees
to discuss nuclear weapons and technology, an issue that Pyongyang has said has
nothing to do with South Korea and merits only U.S. attention.
Lee suspended hefty aid to North Korea after his inauguration in early 2008,
citing a lack of progress in the North's denuclearization through the six-party
talks. The negotiations involve the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and
Russia.
Lee's liberal predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, provided hundreds of
thousands of tons of food and fertilizer every year to the North despite a lack
of progress in denuclearization.
Kim and Roh met with the North Korean leader in 2000 and 2007, respectively, but
skirted the nuclear issue, inviting criticism that they provided aid
unconditionally only to help the North's nuclear weapons development project.
North Korea has boycotted the six-party talks since early last year, when the
United Nations imposed sanctions over its nuclear and missile tests. Pyongyang
demands the sanctions be lifted before it returns to the table.
Steinberg said no.
"Current sanctions will not be relaxed until Pyongyang takes verifiable,
irreversible steps towards complete denuclearization," he said. "Its leader
should be under no illusion that the United States will ever have a normal and
free relationship with a nuclear armed North Korea."
Neither the U.S. nor its allies will provide "material benefits to North Korea
simply to return to the six-party talks," he said.
Steinberg amplified on the stance of "strategic patience" recently articulated by
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"Strategic patience does not mean inaction," he said. "What it means is, we are
prepared to enforce vigorously those sanctions until North Korea takes meaningful
steps to implement its obligations. We are working closely with our allies and
partners in the region to offer North Korea a different future."
Steinberg also addressed North Korea's demand to sign a peace treaty to replace
the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War before it returns to the
multilateral nuclear talks.
"Once it returns to the six-party talks and begins to make progress on
denuclearization, we are all prepared to discuss, including where appropriate in
bilateral talks, all the other elements of negotiations, including with our South
Korean partners, a permanent peace regime in the Korean Peninsula," he said. "We
will not defer the core nuclear issue."
Steinberg also touched on South Korea's demand that it be allowed to reprocess
spent nuclear fuel.
South Korean firms last month won a US$20 billion contract to build four nuclear
reactors for the United Arab Emirates, but a 1974 agreement requires South Korea
to obtain U.S. consent before reprocessing spent fuel, a restriction that makes
it less competitive in the global nuclear energy market. The agreement expires in
2014.
South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Chun Yung-woo met with Steinberg and other
U.S. officials here in recent days and said that the sides agreed to conduct a
joint feasibility study on the issue.
"I think the core understanding, the shared understanding with the vice foreign
minister, very vigorously shared with me and my colleagues, was a clear
determination that whatever we do to enhance civilian nuclear power, we must be
considerate of the proliferation consequences," Steinberg said. "Our discussions
will take place on that shared understanding and we look forward to ways and
seeing how we adapt to the circumstances."
Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs,
said Wednesday that he will visit Seoul next week to discuss the reprocessing
issue as well as North Korea's nuclear intransigence.
Steinberg also said that he discussed with Chun "how modern technology can be
applied" under the 1974 agreement.
He was referring to pyroprocessing, a new technology that South Korea maintains
is less conducive to proliferation and differs from reprocessing by leaving the
separated plutonium mixed with other elements. Nonproliferation advocates say
little difference exists between the two.
South Korea cites agreements the U.S. maintains with India, Japan and the
European Union to provide technology assistance to help them reprocess spent
nuclear fuel, saying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty legitimizes the right
to peaceful development of nuclear energy.
The U.S., however, fears reprocessing by South Korea might undermine
international efforts to denuclearize North Korea, making the security situation
in Northeast Asia more volatile.
hdh@yna.co.kr
(END)

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