Oil shipments to North Korea should be halted, Bush says

WASHINGTON -- President Bush wants to halt U.S. oil shipments to North Korea in response to that country's secret nuclear weapons program, administration officials said Wednesday night.

The policy, which U.S. diplomats hope to press on its Asian allies later in the week, would allow delivery of a shipment currently on its way to North Korea. That would be the last shipment unless the Communist regime does an about-face on its nuclear weapons program, the officials said, speaking on condition of anomymity.

Bush forged the policy in a Wednesday meeting with his national security team, the officials said.

The U.S. and allies have been discussing whether to halt U.S. oil shipments to North Korea in response to its plans to develop a uranium bomb.

The shipments are part of a broader energy assistance package approved for North Korea in 1994 as part of a deal to wean the country away from nuclear weapons and make the Korean Peninsula nuclear-free.

The fate of the shipments is in the hands of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, comprised of the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union.

KEDO's executive board was meeting in New York on Thursday. U.S. diplomats hope to persuade its fellow KEDO members to back Bush's policy. Some allies have expresses reservations about cutting off North Korea's oil.

Meanwhile, North Korea has decided against returning the captured spy ship USS Pueblo after indicating last month that it might do so, according to a former American official who met with authorities last week in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.

Donald Gregg, president of the Korea Society, said in an interview Wednesday that a deal for the Pueblo was hinted at in an Oct. 3 letter in which Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan invited him to visit Pyongyang.

But when Gregg raised the issue during his Nov. 2-5 talks with Kim, he said he was told, "The climate has changed. It's no longer an option."

A vessel carrying U.S. oil was en route to North Korea and could be turned around if KEDO decides to suspend the shipments in response to the North's having reneged on its commitments.

But South Korea and Japan are recommending that the shipments continue because they are concerned that North Korea could retaliate by reviving a plutonium-based nuclear weapons program that it froze in 1994. The program has been under supervision by the International Atominc Energy Agency.

There is almost no support in the Congress for continuing the deliveries because of the North's violation of the 1994 agreement.

Under the agreement, the United States has been sending 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel annually to North Korea. The objective was to help the country meet its energy needs while it phases out its plutonium-producing nuclear reactors.