North Korea visit draws cool response from Bush administration

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration, pressing for the irreversible and verifiable elimination of North Korea's nuclear program, distanced itself Friday from planned visits there by congressional aides and private scientists.

White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said that a six-nation effort to address the issue -- which began last August -- is the appropriate forum for such an undertaking.

The American experts have been dealing with the North Koreans as separate groups but apparently will be traveling to the communist state in the same time frame and may join together for the proposed tour of the nuclear facility at Yongbyon.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is sending Republican staff member Keith Luse and a Democratic colleague, Frank Jannuzi. Both are East Asia experts and work respectively for committee chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Joseph Biden of Delaware, the panel's ranking Democrat.

A second group planning a trip consists of John Lewis of Stanford University; Sig Hecker of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, a nuclear weapons research center; and Jack Pritchard, a former State Department official who left the government last summer.

The six-nation effort to halt the nuclear program began with a meeting in Beijing. Efforts to reconvene the discussions last month fell through. Participants, aside from the United States and North Korea, are South Korea, China, Japan and Russia.

The United States is hoping that North Korea can be persuaded to disarm through security guarantees as well as economic benefits.

Neither help nor oppose

Asked about the plans of the two groups to visit Pyongyang, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said they are not acting on behalf of the administration.

"Any efforts that complicate prospects or undertakings to reconvene six-party talks and to achieve forward movement in dismantling North Korea's nuclear program aren't helpful," Ereli said.

Asked whether the administration opposes the visit, he said, "We neither facilitate nor oppose."

There has been no outside access to the nuclear facility at Yongbyon since U.N. inspectors were expelled at the end of 2002.

The North says it has completed reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods at Yongbyon. If true, that would yield enough plutonium for half a dozen atomic bombs. North Korea is believed to already have one or two nuclear bombs.

In addition to the plutonium bomb project at Yongbyon, North Korea also has acknowledged a separate effort to produce a uranium bomb.

During a visit to East Asia in late summer, Luse and Jannuzi spent three days in North Korea.

In a report, they said they told North Korean officials that the United States views Pyongyang's nuclear programs as a "grave threat to international peace and stability."

They urged the officials to seek a peaceful, negotiated solution to the impasse through multilateral dialogue.