By John M. Goshko
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 17, 1999; Page A01

NEW YORK, March 16—North Korea agreed today to allow U.S. officials to inspect a suspected underground nuclear weapons facility, defusing a growing dispute that threatened to push the United States into a major confrontation with the hard-line communist state.

The agreement, announced after four rounds of talks here over the past three weeks, calls for the first inspection to take place in May. A senior U.S. official said the United States is satisfied it will be able to make as many visits to the site for as long as is necessary to determine what it actually is being used for.

"The agreement we've reached addresses all of our concerns, and it will enable us both to confirm and monitor the current and future use of the suspect site," Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright added in Washington. She said the United States refused North Korean demands for food aid in return for allowing the inspections.

The site, at Kumchang-ri about 25 miles northwest of Yongbyon, has been an issue of major contention between Washington and Pyongyang since last August, when U.S. satellite photographs showed thousands of workers around an underground facility. Although North Korea denies that it is nuclear-related, Pyongyang until now had rebuffed U.S. demands to see first-hand whether any nuclear activity, or possible development of chemical and biological weapons, was going on there.

That, in turn, led to growing threats from Congress to stop funding the 1994 Agreed Framework that is the basis for the Clinton administration's policy toward North Korea. Under that deal, valued at more than $5 billion, North Korea agreed to freeze what the United States believed was a nuclear weapons program and replace its plutonium-producing nuclear reactors with safer light-water reactors and fuel oil provided by the United States.

Despite congressional complaints that North Korea might be using the Kumchang-ri installation to violate the 1994 agreement, the administration avoided the get-tough policy advocated by some Republicans in favor of trying to solve the problem through diplomacy. That appeared to pay off in today's announcement by the agreement's principal negotiators, U.S. Ambassador Charles Kartman and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan.

In the negotiations, the North Koreans had sought to link their cooperation to large new shipments of American food to help relieve the acute shortages that are causing starvation in many parts of the country. But Albright said, "We did not agree to North Korean demands for 'compensation' in return for access."

However, earlier this month, the United States pledged 500,000 tons of additional foodstuffs in response to a worldwide appeal by the Rome-based United Nations World Food Program. In addition, the joint statement announcing the agreement said, "The United States has decided to take a step to improve political and economic relations between the two countries."

U.S. officials described this as a "modest project" in improved potato growing to be conducted by a private voluntary organization.

"We did repeat to [North Korea] something we've often said publicly: Removal of our suspicions concerning Kumchang-ri would enable us to resume progress in our relationship as outlined in the Agreed Framework," Albright said. "In this regard, we have decided to take a concrete step in the form of a bilateral pilot agricultural project."

The denials of a link to the U.N. food aid failed to dispel sharp criticism from congressional Republicans. Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said he supports the provisions about access, but added, "It appears that we are pouring good U.S. food aid down a North Korean hole. . . . This agreement smacks of a 'food for access' deal, which could lead to further provocative actions by the North Koreans to extort future concessions from the United States."

Similar sentiments were expressed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a probable presidential candidate who has been an outspoken advocate of taking a tough line with North Korea. He said: "I hope the agreement will help . . . but I fear that it may be the beginning of a pattern of material concessions by the United States in exchange for vaguely worded commitments that the North Koreans have no intention of keeping."

Albright also announced that the United States and North Korea agreed to resume talks in Pyongyang on March 29 about North Korea's missile development program. That has been another area of U.S. concern, especially since last August when North Korea fired a three-stage missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean.

U.S. intelligence officials suspect that out-of-work scientists from the former Soviet Union are helping the North Koreans develop advanced, long-range missiles that could disrupt the military balance in northern Asia and eventually even pose a threat to the continental United States.

Senior U.S. officials stressed that today's agreement is limited strictly to the Kumchang-ri problem and stands apart from the many other issues between Washington and Pyongyang. Even if another suspect nuclear site were to be detected elsewhere in North Korea, the officials said, its effect on U.S.-North Korean relations would have to be assessed separately and the question of American access dealt with on the particular merits of the new situation.

The officials also noted that the agreement on access to Kumchang-ri is separate from the question of lifting long-standing American sanctions on North Korea. That, the officials noted, involves improvement of North Korea's behavior in such areas as moderating the potentially threatening aspects of its missile program, halting its alleged support of international terrorism and reducing tensions on the Korean peninsula by cutting back its military presence and moving to friendlier relations with neighboring South Korea.