There was a sense of excitement as desk officers, who would soon be asked to work twelve-to-thirteen-hour days in preparing for the negotiations, not to speak of weeks away from their families, rushed into my office, led by the desk director, Jim Foster. Everyone knew that the failure to get a negotiation going was hurting our reputation in Asia, even though, objectively speaking, the fault lay squarely at the doorstep of the North Koreans. But now all that was about to change.
The first thing we needed to do was to fix a date for the meeting. I turned to Jim Foster for the best way to communicate with the North Koreans, and most urgently to suggest a date, which we had tentatively agreed should be July 9, just a little more than a week away. He suggested the so-called New York channel, our contact with the North Korean United Nations office. I asked our China desk to send a message to the U.S. ambassador in Beijing, Clark T. “Sandy” Randt, to inform him that we had proposed that date to the North Koreans, and to ask whether it would work for the Chinese and our embassy.
We decided to hold off informing the other members—Russia, South Korea, Japan—until preparations were further developed, as well as to avoid leaks. A day later, the North Koreans got back to us through New York and agreed to the July 9 date. Sandy Randt also got back to me, pointing out that he would make it work, noting something that I had completely overlooked: Secretary Rice would be in Beijing, on a previously scheduled trip, later the night of July 9. That will sure add to the drama, I thought. I could meet the North Koreans that day, report to the secretary that night, and she could meet with Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing the next day, then they jointly make the announcement following their meeting. Not bad diplomatic choreography, I thought.
I arrived in Beijing on July 8, accompanied by our Chinese-speaking staff assistant, Nolan Barkhouse. The summer heat had already set in and the dust and pollution were terrible. “Welcome to Beijing,” Ambassador Randt said as he met us at the end of the jetway along with his North Korea watcher, Deputy Political Chief Edgard Kagan, who had taken charge of the preparations for the meeting. The “Chinese government facility” the embassy had chosen was to be a dining room, tucked away in the Chinese-government-owned business center, located immediately behind the Chinese-government-owned St. Regis Hotel.
“We should be able to slip in there without any press, as they will all be at the China World Hotel waiting for Secretary Rice,” Kagan explained.
“The Chinese government owns the St. Regis?” I had asked Kagan when I first heard of the selection of venue. “Bit of a stretch as a ‘Chinese government facility,’ no?” (I was anticipating some eye rolling from Condi, who since coming over to the State Department was getting very good at rolling her eyes.)
“Hey, the Chinese own lots of buildings in Beijing,” he responded cheerfully. “In fact, they even own the American Embassy building, but we didn’t think that was appropriate.”
Edgard Kagan was a solid professional and a real talent. He had served in Jerusalem and understood high-stakes diplomacy. In serving in different parts of the world, in jobs always close to the action, Edgard had a better understanding of each because he had a point of comparison. As for our condition that the Chinese had to be there, Edgard explained that negotiations for getting the Chinese to take part in the meeting had not been going well. At our request, the Chinese proposed to the North Koreans that Wu Dawei take part, but the North Koreans vetoed that on the basis that what we had agreed to was a bilateral meeting, not a trilateral. The Chinese countered by offering their director of peninsula affairs, Yang Xiyu, but that too looked to the North Koreans like a trilateral meeting. We agreed to the Chinese suggestion as a fallback that Yang take part only in the beginning of the meeting, and then leave, but as of the morning of July 9 we had not heard back from the Chinese.
It was a Saturday, late morning, and with nothing more to do in preparation for the meeting except monitor our cell phones, Edgard proposed we drive the forty-five minutes out to the Great Wall. In all my trips to China that spring, I hadn’t yet seen the Great Wall, and with nervousness building up in my stomach and my head starting to throb at the thought that the Chinese might not show, I agreed.
It was a bright sunny day when Nolan, Edgard, and I joined the thousands of Chinese tourists on the wall. I wasn’t sure what fascinated me more: the thousands of tourists or the thousands of miles of wall. I asked Edgard every few minutes to call the Chinese, which he did each time, sticking his head out between parapets to gain some privacy for the call. The Chinese never picked up. Edgard called his contact in the North Korean embassy, who confirmed they would be there.
“I’m not sure the Chinese are going to show,” I said, wondering what I should do.
“We can cross that bridge when we get to it,” Edgard said, not wanting to think about the unthinkable.
As I got back into our car and took one more look at the Great Wall, I thought about the work that went into the construction of something 5,500 miles long, almost twice the breadth of the United States. To all the think tankers who believe conflict or enmity is something we should consider inevitable with China, I thought: Who would ever want to get into a fight with a people who built a thing like this?
I arrived at the business center with Edgard, Nolan, and Beijing political counselor Dan Shield. We waited. There were no Chinese, but neither were there any North Koreans. I asked Edgard, for about the fiftieth time that day, to try all his numbers at the Foreign Ministry again. No answer. I then asked him to call his contact at the North Korean embassy to ask where their delegation was.
“He’s asking if the Chinese are there,” Edgard said, holding his cell phone against his chest.
“Just a second,” I responded, trying to get some time to think.
Of course, there were no Chinese, and based on my instructions I should call the whole thing off. I glanced at my watch and realized that Secretary Rice was on her way to Beijing, probably just finishing the refueling stop in Alaska, meaning I could never reach her through the air force’s telephone operator in time for guidance.
I thought about what would be the best outcome: We cancel, because going through with it would violate my instructions, or we proceed with the meeting and get the announcement of the resumption of the talks—and who in the world is going to care whether the Chinese were actually sitting there or not? After all, we were in Beijing, the venue for the Six Party Talks, and the whole purpose was to restart those multilateral talks anyway. All our partners wanted this to happen and were anxiously awaiting word. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen to me? They fire me, and given the state of my head and stomach, I wouldn’t have minded at all. I thought of past mentors: Would Holbrooke have canceled the meeting? How about Eagleburger? Bob Frasure? What would my dad have told me to do? I knew Condi wanted the meeting; she understood more than many people the world of hurt our foreign policy was in and the need for a breakthrough somewhere. And I was sure she would not have appreciated my canceling it without having asked her first. However, neither was I sure she would have wanted even to be asked that question. I took one more look at Dan, Nolan, and Edgard, who by this time was gesturing with a finger of his free hand at his phone clutched in the other, and with an exasperated look all for the purpose of reminding me that I didn’t have all night to answer a simple question. I decided that if there was ever a time to call a diplomatic audible, it was now.
“Tell them the Chinese are not here and ask them if they are going to come or not.”
Edgard gave the answer to his North Korean contact in his fluent but American-accented Chinese, and I’m sure that if China had a version of late-night comedy it would qualify for a pretty good skit.
“They are coming now.”
My thought that no one would ever remember whether the Chinese had been present would, alas, not turn out to be wrong. My “audible” made its way to the press, at first in positive terms, and later as an example of a diplomat “gone rogue,” a theme that would res
urface with some senators during my ambassadorial hearings for Iraq, almost four years later. It was the right call. It was really the only call.
Kim Gye Gwan, Li Gun, Choi Son Hui, and a note taker walked through the elevator door, peering left and right as if to make sure there were no Chinese. I reflected on what must have been their instructions, and what would have been the consequences for them of not following them, or of calling an audible, not a concept known in the North Korean foreign ministry.
We sat down at a long, thin table, Kim Gye Gwan directly across from me, his interpreter to his right, and mine to my right. He and his entire team looked as nervous and uncomfortable as anyone I have ever encountered across such a table. I kept repeating to myself the question, the answer to which I already knew: what is the outcome of this meeting that I am trying to produce? It was, of course, to get the talks restarted. Simple. Stay on task and make sure that is indeed the outcome. Nothing else matters.
“Mr. Kim. It is a pleasure to meet.” (Of course it wasn’t anything remotely a pleasure, but I was focused on the hoped for outcome.) “I hope we will have the occasion to meet many times in the coming months. There is much that needs to be done. Our countries are adrift in a sea of mistrust, and we need to do something to overcome that.”
Kim liked the maritime metaphor, and before I knew it he had us all “in the same boat” sailing to an agreement, I guess.
I told him we would need to manage expectations. These talks have either been characterized by pessimistic expectations, or wildly optimistic ones. We need to take out those highs and lows and manage steady progress.
Who knows if he understood what I was talking about, but his note taker seemed to be taking it all down. I found myself more interested in addressing their note taker because those who read those notes would be the decision makers, not Mr. Kim Gye Gwan.
I told him that the United States does not have a hostile policy to North Korea and its people. But we do have a “hostile policy” to many North Korean policies including its nuclear programs. We cannot accept these weapons of mass destruction, and will look for a political and diplomatic solution to achieve the end of these dangerous programs.
Again, not much of a response from Kim, but his note taker was busy. He seemed to appreciate my comment that we do not have a hostile policy toward North Korea, even though it may have seemed to him a distinction without a difference.
• • •
I found Kim, and would always find Kim, hard to read. On the one hand, he was quite willing to engage in conversations, and any expectations I had that he would be dumbly reading talking points to me did not pan out. He was intelligent, and self-confident, and thoughtful in his responses. But he was certainly not about to describe any personal opinions, or step outside his brief for even a second. And not reading talking points could have been because after more than a decade of doing this, he had actually memorized them.
Talks with the North Koreans were all business. Unlike in the Balkans, there was no discussion of raising difficult teenagers, or sports or hobbies. We rarely strayed from the subject at hand and hardly got to know each other.
15
PLASTIC TULIPS
I slipped back down the elevator, then through the long corridors to a garage where I got into an embassy black Ford Crown Victoria and headed to the back entrance of the China World Hotel. On the way I learned that Secretary Rice had just arrived with her huge entourage and passed through a gauntlet of well-wishers and fans in the hotel lobby, and was waiting in her suite with her senior staff for me to arrive and give a briefing.
When a secretary of state travels he or she brings along the entire staff: administrative assistants, advisors, spokespeople to deal with the press, regional experts, numerous security personnel, and a support staff that would be busy into the night preparing morning press clips and other papers, as if the operation were back on the seventh floor of the State Department. This one-night stand in Beijing was no exception. I went to the seventeenth floor and was stopped by two marine security guards borrowed from Embassy Beijing, who demanded my ID. As I began to look for my State Department ID, which I had chosen not to wear around my neck for the meeting with the North Koreans, one of the secretary’s security agents walking down the corridor recognized me and waved me through. I walked down the hall, marveling at all the duct tape used to cover wires for the State Department telephone system that would join all the rooms where her staff was to stay. Two more agents stood in front of her suite.
Secretary Rice was in one of the sitting rooms, beyond where the elliptical machine, installed for her visit—and every one of her visits, wherever she went around the world—stood. She was sitting on a couch with a few members of her staff, enjoying a glass of wine after a long flight.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” I announced. “I met with the North Koreans, went through our approach. They have agreed to come to the next round of Six Party Talks, which we tentatively agreed would take place later this month.”
“And the bad news?” she asked.
“The Chinese didn’t show. I thought about canceling the whole meeting but decided to go through with it, hoping the Chinese would appear. They never did.”
“I’ll have to take that up with [Foreign Minister] Li tomorrow,” she responded. “They knew they were supposed to be there. I talked to him. You talked to Wu. Sandy [Ambassador Randt, who was sitting with her] talked with his contacts. They should have been there. Take a seat and have a glass of wine. It has been a long day.” She had that right.
The next (long) day, I accompanied Rice to her meeting with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing at the Foreign Ministry. Minister Li was a friendly sort of person, with a hobby of writing poetry whose quality and depth was not always apparent to those who heard it through an interpreter. The meeting was held in a large conference room on the ground floor. As we took our places in the brightly upholstered chairs arrayed in a semicircle, Secretary Rice and Foreign Minister Li in the center two chairs, a small table with flowers between them, we could hear the considerable preparations going on outside in the large hall for what would be an enormous press conference with banks of television cameras. The North Korean announcement that they would come to the Six Party Talks had reached around the world and the excitement was palpable. After opening pleasantries, Condi got right to the point.
“Why weren’t you there?”
“The North Koreans didn’t want us there. But it was a good outcome. You have succeeded in bringing the North Koreans back to the table. This is a great success. Congratulations!” He was very pleased and cheerful and was trying to get Condi to be the same.
“But you were supposed to be there,” she snapped, not quite in the mood that the minister (and I) were hoping for. I started getting worried that she was overplaying this. At that moment Ambassador Randt turned slightly to me and gestured lightly with his right hand that all was going to be okay. Perhaps, I thought, this was all an act that she had rehearsed in front of Sandy. But whatever it was, I appreciated his concern for how I was taking all this, as I was getting more sick to my stomach by the moment.
Li continued in a very pleasant tone, “You should focus on the outcome, and not just the process.”
“The outcome was good,” Condi, in her petulant best, shot back, “but the process was bad.” Oh, give it a rest, I thought. Not everything can be put into categories of good and bad. I started riffing in my mind. Okay, got it. Lots of politics back in Washington, but, really, time to move on. I emerged from my inner dialogue in time to hear her finally drop the issue and focus on when the Six Party Talks would take place, and how we should try to make progress.
At the conclusion of the meeting, the foreign minister and the secretary of state went out to meet the press. There were at least a hundred journalists from the United States, China, Japan, and other countries. Banks of cameras were set up in the back, and while there would be the required questions about Taiwan, the main issue was Nor
th Korea, and especially the news that the North Koreans would rejoin the talks after so many months.
I stood over to the side of the atrium along with some of Rice’s aides.
• • •
Condi was very good in press conferences—gracious, smart, detailed, articulate, one of the best I had ever seen—so I didn’t worry too much about any “bad process” comments (although the Chinese looked a little anxious). She made the obligatory and accurate comment that the resumption of the talks was “only a start,” and that the goal of those talks would be to make progress on denuclearization. She spoke of the need for North Korea to “make a strategic choice” to give up its weapons.
I agreed, although my own view was that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il was unlikely to fall out of bed one morning having made a “strategic choice.” More likely, a strategic choice would only follow a series of less-than-strategic choices to join in talks, agree to some give-and-take, and finally, when the direction was clear, agree to move forward to the ultimate goal. But I knew that day was many months, perhaps years away. On that bright Sunday morning in Beijing, I had no idea how fraught the future would turn out to be, nor did I understand how difficult it would be to achieve even consensus within the Bush administration. All I knew then was that the secretary of state and the president wanted what I was doing to succeed and were going to back me up.
The “Fourth Round” of talks was scheduled for July 26, 2005. There had been three other rounds, in 2003 and 2004, but none had led to the slightest signs of progress even though the U.S. negotiators, led by former assistant secretary Jim Kelly, had worked hard (and fought hard within a divided administration) to come up with new proposals more in line with an effort to achieve a give-and-take negotiation. These internal battles were fought along several fronts. The East Asian directorate in the NSC, in the very capable hands of security scholar and Japan expert Michael Green, battled the Counterproliferation Directorate under the well-mannered but strongly opinionated Bob Joseph, who never saw a problem in the world he did not want to use some form of coercion to solve. Mike prevailed with the president (and with Condi) and so the U.S. position going into the talks was quite a reasonable hand to try to play. My job, in the summer of 2005, was to get some credit for the United States for taking such a position, demonstrate to the parties that we were committed not only to a process of dialogue but also to success, and especially to arrest the slide in U.S.–South Korean relations that our differences over North Korea had caused. We were not just going to give this the junior college try, as Bob Frasure used to say. We were going to emerge with something.
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