Clinton pledges to engage N. Korea bilaterally, through six-party talks

(ATTN: CHANGES headline, lead; UPDATES with more details, background throughout)
By Hwang Doo-hyong
WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 (Yonhap) -- U.S. Secretary of State-designate Hillary
Clinton said Tuesday she will engage North Korea bilaterally as well as through
the six-party talks to address its alleged uranium-based nuclear program and
nuclear proliferation.

"It is a framework that the president-elect and I believe has merit," Clinton
said of the six-party talks at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. "But it also provides an opportunity, as Secretary Rice has
testified before this committee, for bilateral contact as well between North
Korea and the United States."
The remarks by President-elect Barack Obama's choice for the top U.S. diplomatic
post seemed to leave the door open for a meeting between Obama and North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il.
Clinton during the presidential campaign had described such a meeting -- without
preconditions -- as "irresponsible and frankly naive."
But Tuesday she echoed Obama's repeated assertions: "Smart power requires
reaching out to both friends and adversaries, to bolster old alliances and to
forge new ones."
The former first lady said the goal of the six-party talks involving the two
Koreas, the U.S, China, Japan and Russia should be "to end the North Korean
nuclear program -- both the plutonium reprocessing program and the highly
enriched uranium program, which there is reason to believe exists, although never
quite verified."
President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security
Adviser Stephen Hadley also have discussed the possibility of North Korea's
possession of a highly-enriched uranium program in recent weeks. The uranium
program was not addressed by the current six-party deal, raising criticism that
Bush accepted a flawed pact in the interest of a foreign policy victory in his
final months in office.
Clinton also talked about North Korea's suspected nuclear proliferation.
"We have got to end North Korea as a proliferator," she said. "There is certainly
reason to believe that North Korea has been involved with Syrian efforts. We know
that it was involved with Libyan efforts."
She was talking about the bombing of a Syrian facility in September by Israeli
air forces. U.S. officials described the facility as a nuclear reactor, although
the International Atomic Energy Agency failed to provide evidence of that.
"So, it's not only preventing the threat from North Korea -- which is of
particular interest to Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast of the United States,
but it is their role as a proliferator," she said. "I have no illusions about
that. I think it takes tough, reality-based diplomacy to determine what is
doable."
Those areas of the United States are believed to be in range of North Korean
ballistic missiles.
"We will continue to work to prevent proliferation in North Korea and Iran; to
secure loose nuclear weapons and materials and to shut down the market for
selling them," she said.
Clinton said the incoming Obama administration will "use all the elements of our
powers -- diplomacy, development and defense" to address nuclear proliferation
and other security threats.
"We will lead with diplomacy, because that's the smart approach," she said. "But
we also know that military force will sometimes be necessary and we will rely on
it to protect our people and our interest when and where needed as a last
resort."
Clinton said she will help buttress the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and seek
ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as the basis for global nuclear
disarmament.
She endorsed one of Obama's major foreign policy goals, to actively pursue the
NPT with a drastic curtailment of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to persuade
non-nuclear states to refrain from developing their own.
North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel are not members of the NPT, although they
are assumed to possess nuclear weapons, posing a serious chasm in the
international nuclear nonproliferation regime.
"We will work with this committee and the Senate for ratification of the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and we will dedicate efforts to revive negotiations
on a verifiable, fissile material cutoff treaty," Clinton said.
She described North Korea and Iran as "bad actors" in the global nonproliferation
regime, stressing the need for the U.S. to establish "a rules-based framework for
arms control and nonproliferation."
"If the United States once again leads and constructs that architecture, we will
be in a stronger position to isolate the bad actors," she said.
hdh@yna.co.kr
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