Kim tried to reach Bush over N-policy

WASHINGTON - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il attempted to engage President George W. Bush directly on the nuclear weapons issue three years ago but the Administration spurned the overture, say two American experts on Asia.

Writing in the Washington Post, former United States Ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg and former journalist Don Oberdorfer expressed concern that Kim's November 2002 initiative was never pursued and urged Bush to respond positively to the overture Kim made last week.

When Bush took office in 2001, US officials estimated the North had fuel for one or two nuclear weapons. Now, that estimate is up to at least half a dozen and, the authors say, "many believe their claim to have fabricated the weapons themselves".

Gregg and Oberdorfer said they visited the North in November 2002, after then-US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly was there and accused the North of pursuing a secret programme of enriching uranium for nuclear weapons.

The North froze its weapons-related plutonium programme in 1994 under an agreement with the US.

But the discovery of the uranium programme - which the North first acknowledged and then denied - fanned Administration doubts about the North's trustworthiness.

It also led to an impasse between the North and the US during a period when officials say the North advanced its nuclear capability.

Gregg and Oberdorfer said that while in Pyongyang in 2002 "we were given a written personal message from Kim to Bush".

Kim stated if the US recognised the North's sovereignty and provided non-aggression assurances "it is our view that we should be able to find a way to resolve the nuclear issue in compliance with the demands of a new century".

Also in the message, Kim further promised "if the United States makes a bold decision, we will respond accordingly", the authors wrote in an opinion piece.

They said they took the message to senior White House and State Department officials and urged them to follow up on Kim's initiative. But the Administration, then planning for the Iraq invasion, "spurned engagement with North Korea", Gregg and Oberdorfer said.

Within weeks, Kim expelled UN inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and reopened plutonium production facilities frozen since 1994.Since June 2004, the North has boycotted six-nation talks designed to resolve the nuclear crisis.

- REUTERS