Bush's Pyongyang policy 'futile'

By Jonathan Marcus
BBC diplomatic correspondent in Washington

The row centres on North Korea's nuclear facilities

The architect of the Clinton administration's policy towards North Korea has told the BBC the current US approach to Pyongyang is going nowhere.

Ambassador Robert Gallucci stressed the growing danger that North Korea might sell nuclear materials or even a bomb to a terrorist group.

Ambassador Gallucci also urged a fundamental rethink of US policy.

His comments come as a new round of six-party talks on the North Korea nuclear stand-off begin in Beijing.

Proliferation threat

Dealing with North Korea is one of the most intractable problems facing any US administration.

Gallucci said North Korea might sell nuclear know-how to terrorists

Most experts believe that the Pyongyang government could already have up to eight nuclear bombs.

These weapons, if mounted on ballistic missiles, could threaten many of its neighbours.

But Ambassador Gallucci said North Korea could effectively be deterred from using such weapons and that the principal threat from Pyongyang was that of nuclear proliferation.

"The concern that does, I think, motivate most of the worry in Washington, and should, is that North Korea would transfer material weapons to a terrorist group," he told the BBC.

"The concern here of course is that a terrorist group like al-Qaeda would deliver them to the United States and detonate them in an American city and not be discouraged from doing so by the threat of response."

'Hobbled' US policy

Ambassador Gallucci was the architect of former US President Bill Clinton's administration's policy which persuaded Pyongyang to freeze its weapons programme in return for the provision of power generating reactors.

But this deal collapsed, in large part due to North Korea's actions.

But Ambassador Gallucci says that since then there has been no coherent strategy from the Bush administration in Washington.

Tensions between the State Department, on the one hand, and the Pentagon and the vice president's office, on the other, have hobbled US policy, leading to what he called the most distant of negotiations between the US and North Korea.

Ambassador Gallucci believes that only high level direct talks can succeed and while China's support is important, he criticises the Bush team for effectively-sub contracting Washington's North Korea policy to Beijing.

Such an approach, he says, fails to take into account the very different strategic and regional interests of China and the US.