Experts say leniency on North Korea has risks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. leniency with North Korea after delays in implementing a key nuclear disarmament deal puts a carefully crafted diplomatic strategy at risk, former White House officials warned on Monday.

Nearly a year after the February 13, 2007 breakthrough six-party deal reached by China, Japan, Russia, North and South Korea, and the United States, a key deadline under that deal lapsed with no consequences for Pyongyang, the experts said.

North Korea had committed to provide by December 31 a full declaration of its nuclear arms programs, weapons and materials -- a key element in a multistage disarmament process -- but has not delivered the expected inventory.

Steady progress had been made in dismantling North Korea's Soviet-era nuclear reactor at Yongbyon that is the source of its weapons-grade plutonium. But Pyongyang has slowed the process of removing spent fuel rods from that facility, citing delays in promised fuel oil deliveries.

"With North Korea, delays are inevitable, but the delays have not been met with any consequences, which is increasingly going to be a problem," said Michael Green, a Georgetown University scholar who served as top Asia expert in the White House during earlier stages in the North Korea negotiations.

Green, while stressing that he supports the six-party deal, said a pattern of U.S. concessions toward North Korea "creates, intended or not, the impression that we are willing to do whatever we have to do to keep the process going."

He cited the return of allegedly tainted funds to North Korea that had been held up in a money laundering investigation, failure to implement U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed after Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon in 2006 and separating the issue of Japanese abducted by North Korea from the issue of taking the country off a U.S. terrorism blacklist.

To retain pressure on North Korea, the United States should quietly revive U.S.-Japan-South Korea policy coordination after several years' hiatus and prepare to revisit the now dormant U.N. sanctions, Green told a Heritage Foundation panel.

Victor Cha, who worked under Green as a White House Asia expert, said the nuclear declaration represented the first test of whether North Korea had decided to abandon its programs in exchange for aid and an end to international pariah status.