Transcript for July 9

MR. ROBERT L. GALLUCCI: Just about entirely, I think. I, I, I have nothing against the idea of a six-party talk, something Nick pounded on, the, the virtue of having all these parties in Asia engaged. That—it’s true, it is their problem as well as ours. But the fact is it hasn’t worked. And to make the form more important than the substance—to care more about whether we have six parties meeting together than whether we stop the accumulation of plutonium—is absurd, in my view.

MR. RUSSERT: But you’d have some conditions. You had said prior to the missile test that if they took that missile off the launchpad, you’d negotiate face-to-face. Now that they’ve launched it, would you have any conditions before you went back to the table one-on-one?

MR. GALLUCCI: There’s kind of a rule, I think, that you, you really try hard not to negotiate with a gun or a missile to your head, and I think a decent interval now and some work at the United Nations is the appropriate thing to do. But I think we’re taking a view from 30,000 feet right now, what, what should the administration do? It needs to find a way to get back to negotiating table. And the fact that you may get a headline, like the president is, is reversing course, as indeed we have on—in the case of Iran, that’s not so bad if you find you’re on the wrong course. And we have been.

MR. RUSSERT: Ashton Carter, do you agree there should be one-on-one, direct negotiations between North Korea and the U.S.?

MR. ASHTON CARTER: No, I actually think the six-party talks is a perfectly appropriate forum, including for us to speak directly to the North Koreans, if others are at the table. Let’s go back to the logic of the six-party talks in the first place. The reason to have everybody at the table with the North Koreans is not only that they have a, a stake in the outcome as well, but in dealing with North Korea, diplomacy has to have a coercive dimension. And we don’t trade with North Korea, we don’t recognize North Korea diplomatically. There’s almost nothing we can do short of military action to apply pressure to North Korea. We’re capable of military action, and it’s important that that be an ingredient of coercive diplomacy. But the real levers on Kim Jong Il are the Chinese and the South Koreans. It is they who essentially support the regime economically and politically. So it makes sense to have them at the table.

The six-party talks, I totally agree with my colleagues here, have produced nothing so far except a quadrupling of the amount of plutonium, as Ambassador Richardson said, in North Korean hands, and now missile launches. So they’ve been running wild for three years or so. The reasons for that—there’s a lot of blame to go around. Of course, you have to start with the North Koreans and their own intransigence. The Chinese and the South Koreans have not done everything that they should. They’ve shown sticks, they’ve been unwilling to show the—I’m sorry, the carrots—they’ve been unwilling to show the sticks that they can also wield.

I think on our side, it matters less who else is at the table than that we have our own wits about us as we sit down with the North Koreans. And our government, I believe, has been divided over the last few years at the six-party talks between two camps. One camp which believes that we have to give diplomacy a try and is earnest about pursuing diplomacy with North Korea. But there’s another camp in this country, and I think represented in the government, that believes that negotiating with the North Koreans is a fools game, or is even immoral because of the nature of the regime. I don’t agree with that view, because I think it’s more immoral to let North Korea go nuclear than to try to reach a deal with North Korea. But we have been of two minds, and therefore I don’t think we has—have—we, at the table, have been as effective as we might have been. You, you showed some of that ambivalence in the earlier part of your segment, where you see the U.S. government saying one thing at one time, and another thing at the other time. So it’s important that we get our story straight, and that’s more important than who else is at the table.

MR. RUSSERT: You had advocated several weeks ago a pre-emptive military

strike on the missile that was about to be tested. Many criticized that as

belligerent and perhaps could even trigger a North Korea response against

South Korea or against Japan—who knows? In, in hindsight, do you still stand

by that pre-emptive military strike?

MR. CARTER: Well, I, I do, and I want to put that in some context. And, by the way, I would say we should have that same position today—that is, if the North Koreans go out to the launchpad and erect that missile and prepare to launch it, we can destroy that before they can do it. To do so would be a very limited military action—a single bomb, a single cruise missile. The North Koreans aren’t going to start a war in response to that kind of action.

And to those who think that’s too much, I can only say, where are you going to draw a line in the sand with North Korea? At some point, we have to draw a line in the sand and defend it. We say things are intolerable, we say they’re unacceptable, and then we tolerate and accept. Secretary of Defense Bill—former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and I thought long and hard about this, and we thought this was a relatively nonprovocative way to draw a line in the sand with North Koreans. Now I have to emphasize there’s risk in inaction, also. You may say there’s risk in this action, but I have to emphasize there’s risk in inaction, as well, letting North Korea go nuclear.

MR. RUSSERT: Governor Richardson, how do you think the North Koreans would react if we took out their test missile?

GOV. RICHARDSON: Well, I respectfully disagree with Assistant Secretary Carter there, but at least he’s got a new idea, which the administration has not put forth. I think if we are seriously attacked or threatened, that missile—which was a test—was geared to the United States or to our allies, we have allied responsibilities with the South Koreans and Japan—you do take that step. But the fact is that you risk the South—the North Koreans shooting missiles at South Korea, we’ve got 37,000 American forces at the DMZ.

But, Tim, I think another reason for the face-to-face talks is that there are two issues that are separate from the six-party talks that are a serious grievance in our relationship. One is the fact that we have frozen financial assets of the North Koreans—I believe rightly so—but that is a separate bilateral issue. The second is our objection to dealing with North Korea’s request for a light water reactor, which I believe has boggled down the six-party talks, which, by the way, I believe you could have a separate, bilateral, face-to-face negotiation with the United States and also continue the efforts of the six-party talks, because it is the South Koreans and the Japanese that are providing financial and fuel incentives, so you can’t cut them out. But I think it’s essential to have face-to-face, private bilateral talks between the United States and North Korea.

MR. RUSSERT: But in the end, it’s a judgment of North Korean intentions. You’ve been there five times; you know them. And yet a few weeks before the missile launch, you said, “I don’t think they’re going to test,” and they did.

GOV. RICHARDSON: Well, no, Tim, I said, “I believe that they were going to test.” I did say that. And what I sense in my negotiations in dealing with North Koreans...

MR. RUSSERT: You said, “As days go by, I don’t believe they’re going to do it.”

GOV. RICHARDSON: No, but early on, I said that they, they did, on CBS. My point is that when you deal with North Korea, you’re not dealing with individuals like you and me. They don’t believe in compromise. They believe in their only way or the highway. Their view is that their cause is right, and they’re going to wait you out. So they’re totally unpredictable, and I believe the only way to deal with them—and we have shown that effectively in past dealings in the Clinton administration—is direct engagement, to get them to curb their nuclear weapons, as Bob Gallucci did. Secretary Albright almost got a missile agreement. Jimmy Carter got an agreement, which was later violated, regrettably, with the father of Kim Jong Il. My point is that face-to-face discussions with the United States directly, I believe, is a precursor. The continuation of the six-party talks is the best way to go.

MR. RUSSERT: But do they keep their word? Here’s Madeleine Albright toasting Kim Jong Il in North Korea, October of 2000. She appeared on this program four years later, and this was our exchange:

(Videotape, September 12, 2004):

MR. RUSSERT: But didn’t North Korea develop a nuclear bomb on Bill Clinton’s watch?

MS. MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: No. What they were doing, as it turns out, they were cheating. And the reason that you have arms control agreements is you don’t make them with your friends, you make them with your enemies. And it is the process that is required to hold countries accountable.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Ambassador Gallucci, you negotiated that ‘94 agreement. The North Koreans stopped processing in one plant, if you will, but we later found out that at the same time, they were making uranium at another plant.

MR. GALLUCCI: Not actually, no. That’s not what we found out. What happened was we did do a deal. We did stop the—a plutonium-based program, nuclear weapons program. We made sure that 8,000 fuel rods containing around 30 kilograms—enough for five nuclear weapons worth of plutonium—stayed in, in a storage pond. And a deal would have had the North Koreans end their nuclear weapons program. We think they started cheating in the late ‘90s by getting some gas centrifuge equipment from Pakistan. We don’t know a lot about that, where it is, whether the equipment has been put together. We think over a period of time they’ll do what the Pakistanis did, what the Iranians appear to be wanting to do, and put together this gas centrifuge. They never got there yet—or we don’t think they’ve gotten there yet.

MR. RUSSERT: But they broke their word.

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