Transcript for July 9

MR. GALLUCCI: They absolutely cheated. There’s no question about that. But we really, really ought to be clear here what’s happened. There was a nuclear weapons program that was stopped. Plutonium production was stopped, right? And afterwards, tragically, I believe, that agreement which locked them up, was allowed to collapse. And we find ourselves now with the North Koreans accumulating plutonium, a bomb’s worth a year, and freed up that plutonium that was controlled for that period of time, and they say they’ve used it to make bombs. We would have to estimate about five more. And with each passing day, I would argue to you, more important than that missile that Ash would take out on the gantry if it turns up again, with each passing day, we’re going to find ourselves more and more and more closer than we were before to the day when that material could be transferred or sold to al-Qaeda, presenting a threat far greater than the threat that is posed to us by nuclear weapons aboard ballistic missiles. We can deter a country with ballistic missiles.

MR. RUSSERT: We know the return address.

MR. GALLUCCI: We do. But with a terrorist, with unconventional delivery, your national missile defense will not be very good against United Airlines or American Airlines or a bus or a truck. And deterrence doesn’t work terribly well when an enemy values your death more than his life. So no defense, no deterrence. We need to lock up the nuclear program. You would not care about the ballistic missile program if they did not have the nuclear weapons program.

MR. RUSSERT: But you can have all the agreements you want, if they’re going to cheat, what good are they?

MR. GALLUCCI: Madeleine Albright essentially had it correct, in my view. You make a deal. Nobody did that deal in ‘94 thinking we were trusting North Koreans. We had some transparency, a measure of it, and you verify. We caught them cheating. You might make another deal. I think you should. You ask the question, you make another deal. Are you better off with the deal or are you better off without it? If the answer to the former is yes, you do the deal. You don’t ask, I think, the simple question, Have they fooled us before? Then don’t let them fool us again. I don’t believe that’s the way you proceed in international affairs. You ask a very tough question about the national security. Should we do this? Is it better for us? Ask for more transparency. Insist on it. Be tough in the negotiations, not in the formality of whether it’s six parties or it’s bilateral.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you all two presidents, Bill Clinton back in 1993, George Bush 10 years later, talking to the North Koreans, in effect. And I’m asking you to put your mind in place of a North Korean watching this.

President Clinton, President Bush:

(Videotape, November 7, 1993):

PRES. BILL CLINTON: North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb.

We have to be very firm about it.

(End videotape)

(Videotape, May 23, 2003):

PRES. BUSH: We will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Ash Carter, both presidents making very firm, resolved statements. If you’re a North Korean watching that, knowing that you now have the potential building eight nuclear bombs, what are you thinking?

MR. CARTER: Well, I’m concerned that they’re thinking that we’re giving a new meaning to the word “intolerable” because they keep doing things that we say are intolerable and then we tolerate them. That’s why I think at some point you have to draw the line with the North Koreans. I do think and I—here I agree with both the other gentlemen you have on the show, who’ve shown it’s possible to reach agreement with North Korea and to get agreements that serve our interests. The much-maligned agreed framework, as Bob Gallucci pointed out, without that agreed framework, North Korea, by all the calculations of the experts, would now have 50 nuclear weapons. So we were better off with the agreement than without it.

It is possible to reach agreement with the North Koreans, but not when they see the kind of footage that you showed, which is Americans drawing a line in the sand and then stepping back from that line, drawing a line in the sand and then stepping back. I think our, our, our diplomacy has to have carrots in it, but it has to stand somewhere, and as I suggested earlier, I think the missile tests are a good place to take a stand.

MR. RUSSERT: Governor Richardson, draw a line in the sand and step back? The North Koreans watch that, they observe that, they know what their own...(unintelligible)...has been. How do you have any strength in negotiating with people like that?

GOV. RICHARDSON: The North Koreans in, in my dealings with them, they care more about form than they do substance. In your earlier segment, you showed President Bush calling him a tyrant, but then later he called him Mr. Kim Jong Il. I was in North Korea when that happened. The North Koreans were delighted because they felt they’d been treated with respect. They care deeply about protocol. And this is another reason why I think, for a relatively cheap price, a face-to-face negotiation at the level of Chris Hill—who, again, is very competent—I believe would set the stage for a final agreement at the six-party talks, which is essential, which is basically a good agreement.

In exchange for North Korea dismantling its nuclear weapons, its missiles, they get an armistice agreement where they’re not attacked. They get food, fuel, energy assistance.

MR. RUSSERT: Security assurances, we will not topple their regime.

GOV. RICHARDSON: That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. That’s in, that’s in that September agreement that Chris Hill negotiated.

My point is, if it’s just going to be a face-to-face meeting that serves as a precursor that also deals with this frozen assets issue, which has directly hit the North Korean regime, because it controls the foreign expenditures of Kim Jong Il, and you deal with this light water reactor, especially now after we’ve promised it to Iran and economic incentives to Iran, I think the timing is right for this new stage of direct negotiations.

MR. RUSSERT: Ambassador Gallucci, based on your experience, do you believe the North Koreans would give up their nuclear program, give up their nuclear bombs—which they believe in their mind is an insurance policy against an American invasion—for economic assistance, light water reactors?

MR. GALLUCCI: At the end of the day, I don’t know. But that leaves me to conclude, since I really don’t know, that it’s a good idea to find out. It’s a good idea, it was in 1994, to do a deal with the North that required them to give up the program. We did that, and for a period of years we were in a position to monitor that closely, and they did give it up. Indeed, you can make an argument that while the centrifuge program with the Pakistanis was clearly cheating, it wasn’t yet a genuine nuclear weapons program. It hadn’t produced anything and probably still hasn’t produced anything.

So, you have the possibility if the North Koreans are thinking the way they may be thinking, that they need one or the other. They need either nuclear weapons to deter the United States from regime change, or they need a relationship with us that makes it unnecessary for them to have nuclear weapons. The only way to find out whether they’ll ultimately give up those weapons is to do a deal.

MR. RUSSERT: We hear so much talk about Kim Jong Il, tyrant, spoiled child, others have said madman. You’ve been in that country five times. Who is he, what is he?

GOV. RICHARDSON: Well, I, I’ve never met him. I met the number two in command. He is the entire nation. He is basically a cult of personality. He runs everything. He knows everything that’s happening. All power flows through him. What that causes, unfortunately, is an isolated North Korea. His people are in terrible shape economically. I’ve been there five times, I think I’ve seen one tractor. I see people weak and drawn out. They look like they need nourishment. A lot of people are starving there. They have human rights violations.

He is a mercurial character, but I think he’s crazy like a fox. He is not somebody that is out of his mind. He’s, he may be totally unpredictable, isolated, but he’s calculating, and he’s used the Fourth of July. Every time he’s backing—he feels he’s backed down, he moves and does something irrational. He, he, he shoots missiles off. He’s done it twice. He cancels agreements, he gets the nuclear inspectors out in 2002. This is the way he operates, and what we should do is, is take advantage of his vulnerability. He also is vulnerable in the sense that the country is weak economically, it desperately needs an elimination of sanctions, they need food, electricity. He’s realistic, too, I believe.

MR. RUSSERT: Bill Richardson, Robert Gallucci, Ashton Carter, thank you all for a very sobering but important discussion.

Coming next, President Bush celebrated his 60^th birthday this week. And 31 years ago on MEET THE PRESS, then President Gerald Ford talked about being 60 and serving as president. Coming up right here on MEET THE PRESS.

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