SEOUL, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- South Korean officials are calmly awaiting U.S. President George W. Bush's lineup for a diplomatic team for his second term, with mixed views on Washington's future approach toward North Korea.
They are concerned that the new U.S. diplomatic chief's labeling of North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny" may signal Washington's tougher stance toward North Korea to end its nuclear weapons programs, with the communist state's furious response, which may hurt the chances of resuming long-stalled nuclear talks.
But Seoul officials said they were hopeful North Korea and the United States would resume the six-nation talks soon after Bush finishes the lineup for his second-term security team. After winning November's presidential election, Republican Bush will be sworn in for a second term on Jan. 20.
South Korean government officials were embarrassed earlier this week when U.S. Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice told her Senate confirmation hearing that North Korea is among countries that are "outposts of tyranny" in the world that require close attention, which reminded Bush's description of Pyongyang in 2002 as part of "an axis of evil" that posed a threat to international peace.
Officials and experts in Seoul say Rice's harsh rhetoric could have a similarly damaging effect on security conditions on the Korean peninsula, which remains technically in a state of war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with the signing of an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Tension were sharply raised on the peninsula in 2002 as North Korea angrily reacted to Bush's rhetoric and vowed to regard it as a "declaration of war." North Korea had also cut off formal contacts with South Korea, calling it a "puppet of U.S. imperialists," which damaged the fragile inter-Korean reconciliation process.
Later that year, North Korea told visiting U.S. officials that it has run a secret uranium-based weapons program in violation of a 1994 nuclear freeze accord, sparking a new round of the nuclear standoff with the United States.
"President Bush's labeling of North Korea as part of 'an axis of evil' was one of main factors that had frozen ties between Pyongyang and Washington for the past years," said Jun Bong-geun, head of the Seoul-based Institute for peace and Cooperation.
"Rice's rhetoric of tyranny outposts is likely to further worsen bilateral relations and hurt dialogue momentum to break the nuclear impasse," said Jun, who had served a policy adviser for the country's unification minister.
"North Korea is expected to make a furious response to Rice's outpost of tyranny remark," said an official at the Unification Ministry.
Lee Sang-hyun, a researcher at private Sejong Institute in Seoul, described Rice's comment as "very unfortunate" and "untimely" because North Korea has recently hinted it would return to the six-way talks.
Last week, North Korea said it was ready to go back to the six-party talks while proclaiming its desire to become a "friend" of the United States unless Washington slanders Pyongyang's system and interferes in its internal affairs.
The announcement followed a four-day visit to North Korea by an American congressional delegation led by Rep. Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania and vice chairman of the House House Armed Services Committee.
The North's state-run Korean Central News Agency said: "The DPRK (North Korea) side assured the U.S. side that the DPRK would opt for finding a final solution to all the outstanding issues between the two countries, to say nothing of the resumption of the six-party talks and the nuclear issue, if what U.S. congressmen said would be formulated as a policy of the second Bush administration."
Upon arriving in Seoul from Pyongyang, Weldon predicted North Korea would return to six-party negotiations "within weeks." "Our unanimous impression is the DPRK wants to rejoin the six-party talks process," Weldon told journalists.
The United States and North Korea have held three rounds of negotiations that also involved Japan, China, Russia and South Korea since 2003, but no significant progress has been made, raising suspicions that North Korea has stalled international nuclear talks to buy time to develop atomic bombs. Pyongyang has blamed Washington's policies and said it wants to wait and see what Bush will do in his second term.
But Rice reacted cautiously to reports that the North Koreans were ready to rejoin negotiations. "We've heard nothing really from North Korea," she said. "I hope that they (the North Koreans) will actually act because we found that their words are not always completely reliable."
Rice also rejected North Korea's longstanding call for direct talks with United States, saying the Bush administration was committed to a multilateral approach to resolve the nuclear issue.
"Our goal now has to be to make the six-party mechanism work for dealing with the North Korean nuclear program and then hopefully for dealing with the broader problem of managing this dangerous regime," she said. Rice also made clear that her nation had no intention of attacking North Korea.
Seoul officials said the second-term Bush administration would continue efforts to find a peaceful way to solve the nuclear issue, citing an optimistic view by the White House. "We remain hopeful that North Korea will come back to the six-party talks very soon," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun also predicted that the talks would resume after Bush is inaugurated for his second term and his foreign policy team is lined up, saying the conditions are ripe for resuming the six-party talks.
"North Korea must pay attentions to the U.S. message that it would not attack the country and return to dialogue to end the nuclear standoff," a Foreign Ministry official said.
