U.S. has only 3 years for nuke talks with N. Korea: Gregg

By Lee Chi-dong
JEJU ISLAND, Aug. 12 (Yonhap) -- The United States has only three years left to
negotiate the "verifiable dismantlement" of North Korea's nuclear arsenal, a
former U.S. diplomat privy to North Korean affairs said Wednesday, citing the
communist nation's overt goal of becoming a "strong and prosperous" country by
2012.

The year 2012 is highly symbolic for North Koreans as it marks the centennial
anniversary of late national founder Kim Il-sung's birth. Many analysts agree
that the North's recent actions, including a second nuclear test, are in line
with a timetable directed at 2012.
Donald Gregg, who served as national security advisor to George H.W. Bush, said
the latest Bush administration wasted six years before seeking dialogue with the
North in the final two years during which North Koreans "never had full
confidence in dialogue with the Bush administration," owing to the influence of
many neoconservatives such as Dick Cheney and John Bolton.
Gregg said the Obama government should not repeat such a mistake.
"My suggestion would be that during the next three years before the 100th
anniversary of Kim Il-sung's birth we have perhaps the last opportunity to get
North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons," he told reporters during a break at
the fifth Jeju Peace Forum. "For that to happen it is going to take a sustained
and sincere dialogue between U.S. and Pyongyang, in conjunction with Pyongyang's
return to the six-party talks." Gregg also served as the U.S. ambassador to Seoul
from 1989-1993.
He said that at some point Washington has to be ready for higher-level dialogue
with the North, taking lessons from William Perry's success in suspending its
missile activity in the late 1990s and Bill Clinton's recent trip there which led
to the release of two American journalists.
He dismissed media speculation that the Obama administration's policy on the
North has shifted to "containment."
"The objective is very clear. We want to have a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.
The desire for a verifiably nuclear-free Korean Peninsula is a goal we share very
fully with South Korea," he said.
Gregg said the North would be able to show a gesture of goodwill by returning a
U.S. military ship, Pueblo, that was seized in 1968 and now displayed along the
main river in the North Korean capital.
He said the North's chief nuclear envoy Kim Kye-gwan expressed willingness to
hand it over to the U.S. in 2002 but the North didn't do so actually because an
ensuing crisis over the North's alleged highly enriched uranium program chilled
relations between the two sides.
lcd@yna.co.kr
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