Kerry would seek direct talks with North Korea, Iran: adviser

2/8/2004 7:25:10 PM

7:25:10 PM

Kerry would seek direct talks with North Korea, Iran: adviser

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry will seek direct talks with North Korea and Iran but stay tough with both countries if he wins the White House, his foreign policy chief said.

Rand Beers, national security issues coordinator for the Massachusetts senator, was critical of President George W. Bush for shunning direct dialogue with the two countries after branding them members of an "axis of evil."

Speaking to a foreign policy forum, Beers said the question of nuclear non-proliferation was one of the most significant issues facing the world and Washington should press harder to advance negotiations.

"John Kerry believes that the United States should be prepared to talk directly to North Korea," he told the gathering at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank here.

Beers stressed that this did not exclude a multilateral approach to persuade North Korea to scrap its nuclear ambitions, such as the six-party talks due to resume this month including Japan, South Korea, China and Russia.

But he added, "It involves a verifiable regime to make absolutely clear that what the North Koreans agree to is in fact what the North Koreans do. We're not talking about a piece of paper."

Beers said Kerry, currently leading the pack in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination,, also sought more direct efforts to thaw relations with Iran that have been frozen since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

"John Kerry is not saying that he is looking for better relations with Iran. He is looking for a dialogue with Iran," Beers said. "There are some issues on which we really need to sit down with the Iranians."

He listed the cultivation of opium poppies in neighboring Afghanistan, terrorism and nuclear non-proliferation as among the questions Kerry would like to take up directly with Tehran.

"That is not a naive assumption that we will come to paper agreements and shake hands and walk away and think that everything was okay," said Beers, a former top counter-terrorism official in the Bush administration.

"It's a realistic sitting down and having the kinds of discussions that we're just not having because this administration is so tied in its own ideological views of Iran and waiting for the Iranian regime to collapse."

Beers also cited Pakistan, rocked by disclosures its scientists had sold nuclear technology abroad, as a "major concern."

He said Kerry would want to work with a "broad range of countries" to stem the traffic in materials that could fall into the wrong hands and help make nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

"We're going to have look at international (non-proliferation) regimes that currently exist and probably go through some revisions of those regimes in order to find a way to approach and address these problems," Beers said.

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