No decision on U.S. special envoy for N. Korea: State Dept.

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. government has not yet made a decision
on whether to appoint a special envoy for North Korea, the State Department said
Thursday, amid reports that a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea will be
named.
"As far as I know, no decisions have been made on whether or not we would have a
special envoy for North Korea," spokesman Robert Wood said in a daily news
briefing, playing down reports that Stephen Bosworth, dean of the Fletcher School
of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, would be named to the post.
Bosworth, a former ambassador to South Korea and onetime head of the Korean
Peninsula Energy Development Organization, had been widely assumed to be a top
pick for the position given his expertise in Korean affairs.
KEDO is an international consortium charged with building two light-water
reactors for North Korea in return for the North's freezing of its
plutonium-producing reactor under the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework.
The consortium was shut down after the U.S. took issue with North Korea's
suspected uranium-based nuclear program that derailed the framework agreement.
Wendy Sherman, former North Korea policy coordinator under the Clinton
administration, reportedly rejected Obama's offer to take up the post of special
envoy for North Korea amid allegations the job is seen as having little chance of
success.
Critics say that almost all options with regards to North Korea's nuclear program
have been exhausted in the years since negotiations began in the early 1990s.
Any appointment of a special envoy to North Korea will likely come after
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appoints an assistant secretary of state for
Asia and the Pacific, as a clear description of their separate duties will have
to be mapped out, including whether the envoy will report to the assistant
secretary or directly to Clinton.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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