Bush to walk careful line in South Korea visit

By Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush will likely have to walk a careful line when he visits South Korea next week -- pushing to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons while sidestepping several other tense fights.

The election of a new South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, was supposed to mark a fresh start to U.S.-Korean ties after the strain over North Korea's nuclear program under past leaders, but Lee and Bush have had a rough start.

Plans to end a ban on U.S. beef imports went awry after mass protests and the six-party nuclear talks have been complicated by South Korea's anger at the North for the death of a tourist who apparently walked into a restricted zone.

Plus, Washington had to ease its way out of a dispute it waded into between South Korea and Japan over a cluster of islands both countries claim to own.

"I think two issues are going to overshadow what both sides want to do, one is the lingering feeling from the beef demonstrations, and then this more recent territorial dispute over the Dokdo islands," said Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center.

He said the two sides had wanted to focus on shifting their ties to a broader partnership from being largely military focused, but the various miscues had hobbled the effort.

A candlelight protest vigil is expected the night Bush arrives in Seoul next Tuesday as he begins what is likely his last trip to East Asia before his term ends in January. He will also visit Bangkok and attend the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Analysts expect that atop Bush's agenda will be shoring up support for shuttering the communist North Korean government's nuclear weapons program and pressuring the U.S. Congress to pass a lucrative free trade pact inked with Seoul a year ago.

Washington has been pushing for extensive verification of Pyongyang's atomic program and wants to determine whether any nuclear technology was shared with other countries that could pose a threat to the United States or American allies.

In exchange for North Korea providing details about its nuclear program, Bush said he could remove the country from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism as early as August 11, but officials and experts expect that to take much longer.

"Certainly the president doesn't have much time and it's somewhat of a legacy issue for him," said Derek Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who worked in the Clinton administration.

"He's going to focus particularly on verification and moving forward with North Korea and getting advice on that," he said. "North Korea can surprise, it can surprise in all kinds of ways, but they rarely meet a deadline."

The United States with China, Russia, South Korea and Japan have been negotiating for years with Pyongyang, offering economic and humanitarian aid in exchange for the reclusive government giving up its nuclear ambitions.

"Without this action, which we hope the North will take, the delisting will not occur on that time line," said Dennis Wilder, senior director for Asian affairs at the White House National Security Council.

ISLANDS AND BEEF