
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, September 2, 1994                   TAG: 9409020096
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: NEWSDAY
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

U.S. OFFERS N. KOREA CLOSER TIES

The United States Thursday dangled a new bunch of carrots before North Korea, including the first move toward diplomatic relations, in an effort to induce the communist regime to submit its nuclear program to international inspections.

State Department spokesman Michael McCurry confirmed that U.S. officials will travel to Pyongyang Sept. 10 to discuss possible arrangements for setting up U.S. and North Korean ``liaison offices'' in each other's capitals.

On the same date, other department experts will meet with the North Koreans in Berlin to talk about replacing their experimental 5-megawatt nuclear reactor, which is suspected of also producing weapons-grade plutonium, with a new reactor designed to produce electricity.

In deference to fears in South Korea that Washington is moving too swiftly toward establishing relations with the North, McCurry minimized the importance of the talks in Pyongyang and Berlin because, he said, they will be low-level discussions among experts and not policy-makers.

The expert-level talks would deal with the facts and technical problems surrounding the larger issues to be negotiated in the high-level talks scheduled to resume in Geneva Sept. 23.

In those talks, U.S. negotiator Robert Gallucci has been seeking North Korean agreement to permit International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of all its nuclear facilities, including two waste sites that could provide evidence that Pyongyang has reprocessed plutonium for use in weapons.

So far, despite U.S. inducements, North Korea has refused to permit such inspections. Nor has the North agreed to dispose of, under international safeguards, hundreds of plutonium-laden fuel rods from its reactor.

But the North has kept the pledge that was a primary U.S. condition for continuing the talks: It has frozen its nuclear program and has made no move to reprocess the spent fuel rods.

McCurry emphasized that next week's talks ``are not particularly significant because they cannot resolve any of the issues.'' And, he added, ``no liaison offices can be established unless the nuclear issues are resolved.''

The White House also minimized the significance of the talks in Pyongyang, noting that no decisions have been made about opening liaison offices or helping North Korea build a new nuclear power reactor.

by CNB