U.S. Backs Talks On Korean Peace

President Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young Sam announced today that their two nations have invited North Korea and China to join four-way talks aimed at replacing the armistice in effect since the end of the Korean War in 1953 with a permanent peace settlement.

The peace iniative, crafted in high-level talks between Washington and Seoul during the past two months, was announced at a summit between Clinton and Kim at the South Korean resort of Cheju island. The idea remains in the sketchy stages; U.S. officials said China has expressed interest in four-way talks but has not committed itself to attend. No official response has been received from the reclusive North Korean government.

"North Korea has said it wants peace," Clinton said at a press conference with Kim atop a bluff overlooking the East China Sea. "This is our proposal to achieve it and we hope and expect Pyongyang will take it seriously."

Of his adversary to the North, Kim said, "Politically, we dont' believe it's stable." He predicted there could be a considerable delay before Pyongyang responds to the offer for talks, but added, "I believe eventually North Korea will acccept the proposal."

White House press secretary Michael McCurry said the South Korean government approached the United States last winter about pushing for ways for the two Koreas to open a dialogue. The United States then advocated China's involvement, on the grounds that there likely will be no lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula without Beijing's enthusiastic consent. China and the United States were signatories to the 1953 armistice, which would remain in effect during any talks, a U.S. official traveling with the president said.

"China is the great emerging force over the next 10 or 15 years," he added.

The official said the offer made by Clinton and Kim comes with "no deadline, no preconditions." No decisions have been reached about where and when talks would be held.

U.S. and South Korean officials said that even short of an agreement, talks between South and North might lead to interim "confidence-building measures," such as the pulling back of troops along the Demilitarized Zone separating the two nations. In time, talks might include "economic kinds of issues," the U.S. official said. The North Korean economy is near collapse, with severe food shortages, and its problems may increase the incentives for it to seek peace, officials said.

At the same time, however, North Korea earlier this month made several incursions of troops into the DMZ, moves that are illegal under the armistice. North Korea has long sought direct talks with the United States to discuss normalizing relations, but Clinton reaffirmed the U.S. position that this won't happen until the two Koreas have direct talks and reach an accord.

"We have made it abundantly clear there will be no separate agreement" between the United States and North Korea, Clinton said.

Clinton met here in the first stop of an around-the-world trip that will also take him to Japan and Russia over the next week. Cheju, a mountainous island with steep cliffs that fall dramatically into the East China Sea, is a favorite destination of Korean newlyweds and lies about 60 miles southwest of the Korean mainland.

Before his talks with Kim, Clinton and the first lady strolled on the beach below the luxury hotel where the U.S. delegation is staying. "I feel like a honeymooner again," Clinton told reporters back at the hotel.

The proposal has emerged at an opportune moment for enhancing U.S. relations with the three other nations, who played key roles in working out the end of hostilities in 1953. Kim's ruling political party has just survived a close election and as a result is able to endorse new talks with archenemy North Korea that would have been shunned during the campaign as a political wild card.

The Clinton administration meanwhile is eager to demonstrate to China's present leaders that it is willing to cooperate on security matters in the region, after having squabbled with Beijing over elections last month in Taiwan and sales of nuclear-related equipment to Pakistan.

North Korea, for its part, has long sought to jettison the armistice, a conviction it has driven home on the three occasions this month that it sent armed troops into the DMZ, provoking new anxieties in the region.

If the new talks get off the ground, officials said, they can fulfill a key U.S. objective by bringing senior North and South Korean officials into a dialogue about the future of the peninsula for the first time since June 1994, when their deputy prime ministers agreed to hold a summit meeting to foster closer ties.

That event was forestalled by the death of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. Since then, relations have worsened steadily. Some officials of the two countries met last year in Beijing to negotiate the delivery of South Korean rice to ease a famine in North Korea, but the humanitarian shipments wound up producing more acrimony than goodwill.

U.S. interest in easing tensions stems in part from uncertainties over how North Korea will respond to its economic troubles, which have been exacerbated by winter flooding and a particularly poor harvest last year. Defense Secretary William J. Perry warned recently that the country "might respond in some irrational way to the problems they see," a concern given impetus by a shift of some North Korean warplanes closer to the South Korean border last December.

Even some South Korean officials, who have repeatedly counseled Washington not to improve relations with North Korea at Seoul's expense, recently expressed concern that North Korea might be motivated by food shortages to take unpredictable actions to distract its populace.

"In the past year, with all the developments in both countries and a growing interest by Japan, the United States and China in lowering tensions, we have particularly wanted to remove this 50-year-old problem [of the armistice] as a source of concern," a State Department official said.

Although North Korea has previously sought to negotiate a bilateral peace treaty with the United States, "we hope that North Korea will see the [multilateral] approach as the opportunity that it is" to forge a permanent peace, the official said.

He added that in the negotiations, the four parties could raise the same issues North and South Korean officials discussed during their last serious negotiations in 1992. These include mutual inspection and arms-control measures aimed at building confidence that neither intends to attack the other.

Harris reported from Cheju and Smith from Washington.