The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release June 22, 1994
Press Conference Of The President
The Briefing Room
5:34 P.M. Edt
The President: Good afternoon. Today I want to
announce an important step forward in the situation in North Korea .
This afternoon we have received formal confirmation from Noth Korea
that it will freeze the major elements of its nuclear program while a
new round of talks between our nations proceeds.
In response, we are informing the North Koreans that we
are ready to go forward with a new round of talks in Geneva early
next month. North Korea has assured us that while we go forward with
these talks it will not reload its five-megawatt reactor with new
fuel, or reprocess spent fuel. We have also been assured that the
Iaea will be allowed to keep its inspectors and monitoring equipment
in place at the Yongbyon nuclear facilty, thus allowing verification
of North Korea's agreement.
We welcome this very positive development which restores
the basis for talks between North Korea and the United States.
In addition to addressing the nuclear issue, we are
prepared to discuss the full range of security, political and
economic issues, that affects North Korea's relationship with the
international community. During these discussions we will suspend
our efforts to pursue a sanctions resolution in the United Nations
Security Council. We also welcome the agreement between South Korea
and North Korea to pursue a meeting between their Presidents.
I would to thank President Carter for the important role
he played in helping to achieve this step. These developments mark
not a solution to the problem, but they do mark a new opportunity to
find a solution. It is the beginning of a new stage in our efforts
to pursue a nonnuclear Korean Peninsula. We hope this will lead to
the resolution of all the issues that divide Korea from the
international community.
In close consultation with our allies, we will continue
as we have over the past year and more to pursue our interests and
our goals with steadiness, realism and resolve. This approach is
paying off, and we will continue it. This is good news. Our task
now is to transform this news into a lasting agreement.
Q Mr. President, are you going to try to insist on
finding out whether or not they have already built a bomb and getting
the facts on any past violations as part of these talks?
The President: Well, let me say that, first of all, we
have been in touch with the North Koreans in New York almost at this
moment. We will set up these talks and we will have ample
opportunity to discuss the range of issues that will be discussed in
the talks. And we expect to discuss, obviously, all the issues that
have divided us.
Q Mr. President, what concessions did we make to
bring this about? And why is it that you did not meet with President
Carter face to face? Here's a man who actually met Kim Il Sung, one
of the few -- our profiles may not jive and so forth. You would have
had a great chance to debrief him, and instead, you talked to him on
the telephone.
The President: We talked to him for a long time on the
telephone. The only reason we didn't is because I didn't want to ask
him to come all the way up to Camp David, and we had planned to go up
there for the weekend. And he decided and I decided that -- we know
each other very well, we've known each other for 20 years -- we
decided we didn't need to do it; we could just have a long talk on
the phone, and that's what we did.
Q Did we make any concessions --
The President: No.
Q -- to the North Koreans to bring this about?
The President: No. The only thing that we said was
that we would suspend our efforts to pursue sanctions if there was a
verifiable freeze on the nuclear program while the talks continued,
which included no refueling of the reactor and no reprocessing.
When President Carter came back he said -- this was the
cautionary note I raised in Chicago last Friday when I was asked to
comment on this statement -- he said that he believed that Kim Il
Sung had made that statement to him. We said that we would wait for
official confirmation. We received it today. That confirmation
gives us the basis for resuming the talks.
Q President Clinton, some of your aides are saying,
we got everything we want here. Is this one of those cases where the
other guy blinked?
The President: I don't think it's useful for me to
characterize it in that way. We know what the facts are. If you
look at what we've done over the last year and a half, we have
followed basically a two-pronged policy. We have worked as hard as
we could to be firm, to be resolute, to bring our allies closer and
closer together. And when I say our allies on this issue, I consider
not just South Korea and Japan, but Russia and China to be our
allies. All of us have the same interests and the same desires.
We also always kept the door open. We always said -- I
always said I did not seek a confrontation, I sought to give North
Korea a way to become a part of the international community.
When President Carter was invited and expressed a
willingness to go to North Korea , I thought it gave us one
opportunity that we would not otherwise have with a private citizen,
but a distinguished American private citizen, to communicate the
position of our administration and to do it -- the very fact that he
went, I think, was a gesture of the importance that we placed on
resolving this matter, and not just for ourselves but for the world.
And so I think that we know what the facts are. We know
we pursued a firm course. We know that President Carter went and
made a very persuasive case, and we know what the North Koreans did.
I don't think it's useful to characterize this in terms of winners
and losers. I think the world will be the winner if we can resolve
this. But we've not done it yet.
Brit.
Q Mr. President, it would appear that President
Carter may have either seen something that perhaps you and others may
not have seen as clearly as he did, or that perhaps this was a more
closely coordinated effort between you and Mr. Carter than it may
have appeared at the time. Is either of those things correct?
The President: Well, I don't know that I would
characterize it in that way. He called me; we talked about it. I
wanted to make sure he had adequate briefings. I have always -- I
have, as you probably know, I have -- and I've said this I believe
publicly -- I have sought other means of personally communicating to
Kim Il Sung that the desires of the United States and the interests
of the United States and the policy of the United States was to
pursue a nonnuclear Korean Peninsula and to give North Korea a way of
moving with dignity into the international community and away from an
isolated path, which we found quite disturbing for all the reasons
that I've already said.
It seemed to me that when President Carter expressed a
willingness to go and they had given him an invitation of some
longstanding to come, that that gave us the opportunity to give North
Korea a direct message to their leader from a distinguished American
citizen, without in any way undermining the necessary and correct
government-to-government contacts that we had going on at other
levels.
President Carter, I think, was very faithful in
articulating the policy of our government. And I think that that
provided a forum in which the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, could
respond as he did. And I'm very pleased about it.
When we were called last Thursday and this whole issue
was discussed, and we said what we said about we hope that their
message meant that they were willing to freeze their nuclear program,
then they said they were. Then we got formal confirmation today of
the definition of freeze. Their definition was the same as ours. We
had the basis to go forward. I'm very happy about it.
Yes, Wolf.
Q Could I -- there will be critics, as you well know,
who will argue that once again the North Koreans have succeeded in
stalling and, clandestinely, this will give them an opportunity while
their negotiators talk to U.S. negotiators in Geneva to pursue their
nuclear ambitions, which they're not about to give up. How do you
verify that they are sincere in this effort?
The President: Well, that was a big part of the
statement, of course, of the letter that we got -- not just that
there would be an agreement to freeze the program, but that the
agreement be verifiable. The Iaea inspectors and the monitoring
equipment on the ground can be and will be used to verify the
commitment not to reprocess and not to refuel.
If we didn't have some way of verifying it, you and I
wouldn't be having this conversation at this moment.
Yes -- one last question.
Q Mr. President, could you tell us, beyond just the
focus of the talks, could you tell us what your longer-range view is?
Do you see the Koreas being reunified? What do you see happening,
coming out of all this?
The President: Well, I think, first of all, that is a
decision for the peoples and their leaders in South and North Korea
to resolve. What the United States wants is for the agreement that
the Koreas made in 1991 to make the Peninsula nonnuclear to be
carried through.
The United States wants the Npt to be a success with
regard to North Korea . The United States wants North Korea , in
whatever relationship it pursues with South Korea -- that is up to
them -- to move toward becoming an integral and responsible member of
the international community. That will auger well for the peace and
prosperity of the peoples of north Asia as well as for the security
interest of the United States. That is what we have pursued with
great diligence, and I'm very hopeful that these talks will bring us
closer to that.
As I said, this does not solve the problem, but it
certainly gives us the basis for seeking a solution. And I'm quite
pleased.
Thank you very much.
Q Have you called Jimmy Carter?
The President: Oh, I have. I called him, talked to him
about the letter. We had a very good talk; told him again I was glad
he went and I thought it was a trip worth taking, a risk worth
taking, and I was very pleased.
Q You didn't mind his criticism of your sanctions
policy? He was pretty blunt, wasn't he?
The President: No. No, as long as the agreement --
like I said, we've been friends a long time. The agreement was that
he would faithfully communicate our position. I am absolutely
convinced he did it, and I'm absolutely convinced now that they have
met the agreement. And I feel good about it.
End 5:45 P.M. Edt