U.S. to Ease Commercial Sanctions on North Korea

WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday announced that the United States will move immediately to ease commercial and trade sanctions against one of the world’s most isolated and notorious nations, North Korea.

White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said the administration will normalize trade in most consumer goods and other commercial products between the United States and North Korea. The U.S. will also permit transfers of personal and commercial funds and will open commercial air and sea cargo links.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, hinted that South Korea and Japan probably will take similar action in the coming weeks.

“The steps we take today have been coordinated very closely, especially with our counterparts in Seoul and Tokyo,” said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Lockhart said sanctions will remain on sales of military equipment and so-called dual-use items that have both civilian and military functions. Other administration officials said North Korea will remain on the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism, which precludes the regime from receiving U.S. development assistance.

The White House announcement fulfills the U.S. side of a bargain struck Sunday between U.S. and North Korean negotiators in Berlin. North Korea indicated in those talks that it was prepared to suspend testing of its new multistage Taepodong 2 long-range ballistic missile in return for U.S. moves toward ending the Communist regime’s crippling isolation.

Western analysts believe that the Taepodong 2, if successfully tested, would seriously undermine the security balance in Northeast Asia. The missile also is believed to have a range sufficient to hit Alaska.

On one level, the steps taken by the two nations are admittedly modest: The North Koreans agreed only to suspend missile testing as long as the dialogue continues, while the potential for commercial ties with a backward country whose population hovers near starvation seems bleak in the short run.

At another level, the announcement marks what some hope will be the first step in a far more significant journey, one that could eventually see an end to North Korea’s decades-long isolation from the global mainstream and eliminate the threat that the regime might sell nuclear and weapons technologies to other nations.

U.S. officials believe that the agreement in Berlin may be just such a step forward. They note that the meeting followed former Defense Secretary William J. Perry’s presentation in May to North Korean leaders of a road map toward normalization. Perry made the trip to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, after a comprehensive policy review he led concluded that a gradual engagement would be the best way to neutralize the North Korean threat.

While nothing is clear cut in dealings with North Korea, Perry--along with many in the administration--believes that the Berlin agreement signaled that the Communist regime was at least prepared to make a small step toward eliminating that threat.

“For more than 40 years, the threat of another war on the Korean peninsula has hung over our heads like a dark cloud,” he told reporters Friday at a State Department briefing on his policy review. “Today, that cloud is beginning to drift away.”

But in the mysterious world of North Korean diplomacy, few were willing to predict where Friday’s action might lead.

“Whether they use this to bide their time for a better opening later [to develop weapons of mass destruction] or whether it is a small step toward some kind of normalization process, where North Korea agrees to play by international norms, is a question that just can’t be answered right now,” said Patrick Cronin, director of research at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington and a close follower of North Korea.

Wherever Friday’s action leads, many observers saw it as little short of astounding that the administration is reaching out to what is widely viewed as one of the world’s most repressive and unpredictable regimes, a Stalinist throwback with an egregious human rights record and ambitions to build nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them.

U.S. officials say the decision came after alternatives--including working to undermine the regime, encourage internal reforms or continue the status quo--were rejected as impractical and dangerous.

Perry underscored the hazards of diplomatic inaction Friday by describing a June 1994 incident in which he said the U.S. and North Korea came close to armed conflict over Pyongyang’s nuclear program. That crisis was defused when North Korea agreed to suspend its nuclear efforts in return for a pledge by outsiders--mainly Japan and South Korea--to build two light-water nuclear reactors in the North.

Not surprisingly, Friday’s decision was greeted on Capitol Hill with a mixture of praise from leading Democrats and angry criticism, especially from conservative Republicans.

“I’m dumbfounded,” said Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach). “Based on both the public and private discussions [with Perry], there’s no basis for this decision. It’s a reward for bad behavior.”

However, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., applauded the Clinton administration’s move, calling it “a modest step along the path toward peace in a very important region.”

It was not immediately clear what the next move might be in U.S.-North Korean contacts, although some speculated that it might be to move them to a higher level of representation.

“We’ll look for some indication on North Korea’s part,” said Robert Suttinger of the Brookings Institution in Washington, a former Clinton administration advisor on Asia. “The next move is up to them if they want to continue the process.”

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What Changes, What Doesn’t

Restrictions against North Korea will be eased on:

* U.S. imports of raw materials and most goods made in North Korea.

* Sales of most U.S. consumer goods and financial services to North Korea.

* U.S. investment in agriculture, mining, petroleum, timber, transportation, road building, travel and tourism.

* Direct financial help from U.S. citizens to relatives or other individual North Koreans.

* U.S. transport of ordinary cargo to and from North Korea by ship and plane.

* Commercial flights between the United States and North Korea.

Restrictions remain on:

* Sales of U.S. weapons and missile-related technology.

* Unlicensed export of “dual-use” goods or technology--items that could have military uses--regulated by the Commerce Department.

* U.S. foreign aid, including help from the Peace Corps and the Export-Import Bank Act.

* U.S. support for other international loans to North Korea.

* Unauthorized financial transactions between U.S. individuals and the North Korean government.

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Source: Associated Press