Message taken from White House to N Korea

A top White House adviser has personally delivered a pointed message to North Korean officials in New York, urging them to act on a nuclear disarmament pledge and telling them that US patience is limited, a US official said.

Victor Cha, President George Bush’s top adviser on North Korea, told the North Koreans yesterday that frustration is rising 10 days after the North missed a deadline to shut down its main nuclear reactor.

“Everyone’s waiting on North Korea to act,” said the official. “We don’t have all the time in the world. We have patience, but patience is limited.”

The North Koreans said they would convey the message to officials in Pyongyang, the US official said.

Cha is a deputy negotiator at nuclear talks with North Korea that include Japan, China, Russia, the United States and South Korea. He travelled to New York with Sung Kim, the State Department’s director of Korean affairs, the US official said.

The State Department occasionally sends messages to Pyongyang through North Korean officials at the United Nations in New York, but it is unusual for a White House official to personally make the trip and indicates the importance the Bush administration attaches to making progress on the issue.

North Korea pledged in February to begin abandoning its nuclear programme in return for energy aid and political concessions, but it missed an April 14 deadline to shut down its nuclear reactor. The North has refused to act until it receives 25 million dollars in cash frozen after a Macau bank was blacklisted by the United States for allegedly helping the North with money laundering and counterfeiting.

The funds have been freed for withdrawal, but for unknown reasons the North has not yet acted to recover the money.

The Cha meeting followed a visit on Monday to Washington by South Korea’s envoy at international nuclear talks, Chun Yung-woo. Chun said the United States and South Korea are frustrated with North Korea’s failure to meet disarmament obligations but are willing to give the North more time.

“There’s no ultimatum,” the US official said of the Cha meeting. “But there is a degree of frustration among all parties.”

The North Korean issue will be a topic of discussion when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visits Washington tomorrow for talks with Bush.

Also yesterday, US Army General B.B. Bell, the head of US forces in South Korea, told politicians that North Korea could become a “moderate nuclear power” by 2010 if current disarmament negotiations fail.

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il’s government, Bell told the Senate Armed Services Committee, views its ballistic missile programme as a source of international prestige and regional influence, a deterrent against attack and a means of generating money from exports.

As a result, he said in testimony, the North continues to produce missiles “and may ultimately aim to develop nuclear armed missiles to threaten regional countries and even the US”

Separately, Robert Joseph, the State Department’s senior arms control official until last month, said the United States could be prolonging the life of the regime in Pyongyang as North Korean leaders pretend to give up their nuclear weapons in exchange for energy aid.

Joseph urged the five nations to hold back concessions until the North fully and irreversibly dismantles its nuclear programme.

Calling North Korea “the most repressive, the most totalitarian government on the face of the earth,” Joseph said North Korea recognises that joining the international community would mean the end of the regime’s absolute power over its people.