Kim Yong-nam complained about threats from outside world: report

By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Dec. 24 (Yonhap) -- North Korea's ceremonial head of state complained
about threats from the outside world when he met with a group of U.S.
businesspeople recently, a report said Thursday.
Charles Boyd, president of Business Executives for National Security, a
nonpartisan Washington-based organization, led a group of U.S. businessmen to
Pyongyang earlier this month to meet with Kim Yong-nam, president of the
Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, and other officials in the reclusive
communist state.
"Kim Yong-nam, president of the Supreme People's Assembly, told him how
threatened North Korea felt by its neighbors," said the report carried by the Web
site North Korean Economy Watch.
A retired U.S. Air Force four-star general, Boyd told the Web site, "To the
extent that I could, I think I tried to relieve him of some of his anxiety about
the external threats to the country."
North Korea has said its nuclear weapons programs are a deterrent to threats from
the U.S., insisting it will not abandon its arsenal unless there is an end to
what it considers U.S. hostility.
Pyongyang wants to forge a peace treaty with the U.S. to replace the fragile
armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, when U.S. troops fought alongside
South Korea against invading North Korean troops, aided by their communist ally,
China.
The U.S. position is that any peace treaty should be discussed within the
six-party talks on ending the North's nuclear ambitions.
Stephen Bosworth, U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, who visited
Pyongyang earlier this month, hinted at holding four-party discussions on the
peace treaty within the six-party framework.
Boyd said his delegation did not discuss investment or any other business
opportunities while in Pyongyang, citing U.N. sanctions slapped on North Korea
for its nuclear and missile tests.
"I think they believed that we came with business leaders who were interested in
investing in North Korea, and of course that we had to make that clear to them
right from the outset that nobody had any intention whatsoever of making any
investments in North Korea and in fact could not due to international sanctions,"
he was quoted as saying.
"They were not particularly pleased to hear that. They wanted to talk about
investments. They didn't want to talk about the linkage of those investments to a
resolution of the nuclear issue," he said, adding he and his colleagues discussed
"the benefits of leaving their isolation and entering into the globalized world."
The delegation included Ross Perot Jr., chairman of the board of the Perot
Systems Corp., Maurice Greenberg, chairman of C.V. Starr & Co. Inc., and Boyd's
wife, Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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