The Bush administration has been taking a pummeling from fellow conservatives who assert that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has given no sign of giving up his nuclear weapons and that negotiating with his regime is a waste of time.
So far, however, the Bush bashing seems to have had little effect. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week that the US would continue trying to engage North Korea along with South Korea, Japan,China and Russia in what is known as the Six-Party Talks.
The latest round began right after Jan. 1 when Nicholas Eberstadt, a North Korea specialist at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank in Washington, wrote in USA Today: "Once and for all, can we please stop pretending that Kim Jong-il is negotiating with us in good faith?"
The only surprise about North Korea's failure to declare all its nuclear programs by the end of last year as it had agreed, Eberstadt wrote, "is Washington's seemingly unending tolerance for this diplomatic masquerade."
Several days later, John Bolton, who until recently was US President George W. Bush' s ambassador to the UN, let loose another blast. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bolton pointed to "Pyongyang's unwillingness to give up anything of consequence concerning its nuclear program."
He concluded: "We are going nowhere fast in denuclearizing North Korea."
Those shots came from outside the administration. An even more withering flare came from inside, when a senior US State Department official, Jay Lefkowitz, told an audience at AEI that "North Korea is not serious about disarming in a timely manner."
Lefkowitz, who is Bush's special envoy for human rights in North Korea, said Pyongyang's "conduct does not appear to be that of a government that is willing to come in from the cold."
"It is increasingly clear that North Korea will remain in its present nuclear status when the administration leaves office in one year," he said.
North Korea has been working on nuclear weapons for 20 years and detonated two devices in 2006.
The US and North Korea worked out an "Agreed Framework" in 1994 under which North Korea was to freeze its nuclear programs, but that soon fell apart. The Six-Party Talks, with China as host, began in 2003. Last year, Pyongyang agreed to dismantle its main nuclear facility and to identify all its programs.
INTELLIGENCE
The North Koreans have been dismantling the aging and crumbling reactor at Yongbyon, but officials with access to intelligence reports said that everything else pointed to a decision by Kim Jong-il to continue the nuclear program. They said he saw the nuclear program as a mark of national prestige and intended to stave off threats to his regime's survival.
Lefkowitz criticized China and South Korea for failing to press Kim Jong-il to give up nuclear weapons. China, he said: "has not seriously pushed North Korea to abandon its weapons programs, and its assistance programs and trade with North Korea have persisted with only brief interruptions."
"Beijing does not want a precipitous collapse of the North Korean government, which could cause a refugee influx and instability in its border region," he said.
Many ethnic Koreans live north of the Yalu River on the border with Manchuria.
South Korea, Lefkowitz said: "has not applied serious pressure on North Korea and appears to share China's preference for the status quo over a process of change it may not be able to control," while providing "copious amounts of assistance" to relieve Pyongyang's economic distress.
The US State Department attempted to rebut Lefkowitz's statements.
Sean McCormack, a spokesman, told reporters the following day: "His comments certainly don't represent the views of the administration."
McCormack said that the reactor at Yongbyon was being disabled and he hoped North Korea would produce a declaration of its other nuclear facilities.
Rice, queried by reporters while flying to Berlin, was pointed in rebutting Lefkowitz.
"I can tell you in no uncertain terms that he wasn't [speaking for the administration]. He's the human rights envoy. That's what he knows. That's what he does. He doesn't work on the Six-Party Talks. He doesn't know what is going on in the Six-Party Talks and he certainly has no say in what American policy will be," she said.
Neither Rice nor any of her spokespersons, however, could give assurances that Kim Jong-il is ready to surrender the six to eight nuclear bombs he is believed to have stored away somewhere.
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
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