Gates issues tough warning to N. Korea
U.S. not willing to pay Pyongyang for cooperation
SINGAPORE | Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Saturday said North Korea had a stark choice -- to remain a pariah or "chart a new course" - but suggested that the Obama administration would not return to a policy of trying to bribe Pyongyang to stop building nuclear weapons.
In a closely watched speech before Asian defense ministers, military chiefs and diplomats five days after North Korea tested a nuclear device for the second time, Mr. Gates issued a tough warning to the reclusive state.
"The choice to continue as a destitute, international pariah, or chart a new course, is North Korea's alone to make," Mr. Gates said. "The world is waiting."
The defense secretary, a holdover from the Bush administration and a former CIA chief, said the U.S. would protect itself and its allies if North Korea escalates further. At the same time, he suggested that the Obama administration would not pursue a policy followed by its two predecessors.
North Korean leaders "create a crisis, and then the rest of us pay a price to return to the status-quo ante," he told the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security conference in Singapore organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Mr. Gates referred to steps North Korea took in 2002 and 2003 to expel U.N. inspectors from its main nuclear plant at Yongbyon and begin producing plutonium for atomic weapons after the collapse of a prior agreement with the United States. In 2007, during six-nation negotiations, Pyongyang agreed to disable the complex in exchange for a series of economic benefits from the U.S. and the four other countries in the talks - South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
Until 2002, Yongbyon was frozen under the 1994 accord known as the Agreed Framework, which was negotiated after another crisis created by the North, and gave North Korea various economic benefits, including heavy fuel oil and the foundation for two civilian nuclear reactors.
"As the expression goes in the United States, 'I'm tired of buying the same horse twice,' " Mr. Gates said Saturday in an allusion to Yongbyon's freezing or disablement.
The Obama administration has asked Congress for $100 million in economic aid for the communist state as part of the six-party talks in next year's budget, but that money looks unlikely to be spent as North Korea continues a belligerent response to U.S. overtures.
The Bush administration did not hide its distaste for the Agreed Framework, insisting repeatedly at the beginning of its term that North Korea's bad behavior should not be rewarded and that the administration would not be blackmailed. However, it later changed its mind, saying the incentives it provided were worthwhile because they prevented the production of more plutonium.
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