President Roh Moo-hyun holds a press conference at Cheong Wa Dae on Tuesday. /Yonhap Bush Favors Denuclearization First, Peace Later Was the Korea-U.S. Summit a Success? What Was Lost in Translation Between Roh and Bush

But pundits said the president’s remarks are self-contradictory. Nam Joo-hong, a political scientist at Kyonggi University, said it is necessary to get confirmation from Kim at the summit to speed up resolution of the nuclear problem, if indeed it is being genuinely settled as the president said. “The president’s remarks conflict with each other,” Nam said, because if North Korea is trying to resolve the problem through negotiations with the U.S., it is difficult to understand how raising it at the summit would cause a quarrel.

Song Dae-sung, a senior researcher at the Sejong Research Institute, said Roh “appears to lack the will to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem. I don’t understand what the president meant by saying that discussing the nuclear issue at the summit would result in a quarrel.” Many experts also disagree that the nuclear deadlock has been broken.

A researcher with a state-run think tank said only an agreement on procedures was produced, and it would be hasty to say that the problem “is being resolved” when there is only so far a roadmap for reporting and disablement of facilities. “There could still be a bumpy road ahead in establishing a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, since the disablement of North Korea’s timeworn nuclear facilities in Yongbyon is totally different from the abandonment of plutonium and nuclear weapons,” he added.

Chun Yung-woo, South Korea's top negotiator in the six-party talks, predicted at a recent seminar a worst-case scenario where the North may demand light-water reactors and refuse to scrap its nuclear weapons.

Prof. Kim Tae-hyo, a political scientist at Sungkyunkwan University, said there was no evidence that North Korea has decided to scrap its nuclear programs. “It’s also possible that the North Korean nuclear standoff will drag on,” he said. “Libya decided to abandon its nuclear weapons in 2003, but the U.S. didn’t removed the country from its list of state sponsors of terrorism until 2005.” He added the differences between the U.S. and President Roh are palpable.

Baek Seung-joo, chief researcher of the North Korean Studies Division at the Korean Institute for Defense Analysis, pointed out that U.S. President George W. Bush made it clear that North Korea’s nuclear abandonment must come before an agreement on permanent peace for the peninsula, while President Roh thinks that it would be helpful to discuss the two matters concurrently.

Experts offered different forecasts about the chances the North will really abandon its nuclear arms program. Prof. Ko Yu-hwan of Dongguk University predicted North Korea to give up on its nuclear programs and work to improve relations with the U.S. to overcome its economic difficulties. But Kim Keun-sik, a professor of North Korean studies at Kyungnam University, said the North’s nuclear abandonment depends on Bush’s promise to guarantee the security of the North Korean regime.

(englishnews@chosun.com )