N. Korea:  U.S. ambassador's
comments 'provocative'

By Jim Lea
Stars and Stripes

North Korea has blasted U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Stephen Bosworth for saying that Pyongyang could quickly change its decision to improve ties with the United States.

Bosworth made the comment Oct. 27 in Seoul at a seminar sponsored by the Council on U.S.-Korea Security Studies.

"Despite the progress we have made with the North, we all recognize that in a system so dependent on the decisions of a single individual (North Korean leader Kim Jong Il), decisions can be changed as quickly as they have been made."

He added, however, that "the more engagement advances, the greater the potential cost to North Korea of a reversal of course."

On Monday, Pyongyang’s state-operated Korean Central News Agency categorized Bosworth’s comments as "provocative … groundless (and) very improper behavior" that casts doubt on the North’s efforts to improve relations with the United States.

KCNA said the comment "reflects the position of right-wing forces who are still seized with enmity" toward the North.

The news agency said the United States has not kept faith in relations over the past few years. That is exemplified, KCNA said, by the United States "not fulfilling commitments" it made in the 1994 nuclear agreement. Under that agreement, the North froze its nuclear development program in return for Washington, Seoul and Tokyo providing it with two light-water nuclear reactors to supply electrical power.

Originally, those reactors were set to go online tentatively in 2003. But difficulties in completing financing for the estimated $4.5 billion project, concern that Pyongyang may be conducting a secret nuclear weapons development program and Japanese anger over the North’s launch in 1998 of a Taepodong missile have set the completion date back.

KCNA noted that a British member of the European Union parliament who recently visited the North said the reactor project "is unlikely to be finished before 2010."

That, the news agency said, is an indication the project may eventually be abandoned.