Tufts dean to be named envoy to N. Korea

As ex-ambassador he has knowledge of leadership there

Stephen W, Bosworth, Tufts University dean and former US ambassador to South Korea, answered questions after a recent trip to North Korea, where he will return as special US envoy. (Associated Press/Greg Baker)

WASHINGTON - Having recently returned from a fact-finding trip to North Korea, Stephen W. Bosworth, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, will have little time to unpack his bags in Medford before heading back to the region - this time as President Obama's special envoy to North Korea, according to administration officials.

Bosworth, 69, is expected to be named today the top US diplomat to the six-nation talks that have sought for more than five years to persuade the reclusive North Korean regime to give up its nuclear weapons program in return for an end to nearly 60 years of economic isolation.

As a former ambassador to South Korea who was deeply involved in the unsuccessful effort to convince North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to give up his nuclear program 15 years ago, Bosworth has extensive knowledge of the difficulty of dealing with the country's Communist leadership, according to foreign policy specialists who know him.

When Bosworth met with officials in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang last week, the country's leaders expressed hope for better relations with the United States under the Obama administration. But just weeks earlier North Korea had threatened to back out of peace agreements with South Korea, and was reportedly preparing to test a long-range missile.

"I think [Bosworth] would be a very good appointment," said Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy who testified yesterday before a House panel on his own recent trip to North Korea. "He has had experience in the most senior levels."

A lot has changed since Bosworth left government service in 2001. North Korea pulled out of a key nuclear treaty in 2002, kicked out international inspectors, and officially became a nuclear power with its first underground nuclear explosion in 2006. Further evidence of North Korea's ambitions came in 2007, when it was revealed that Pyongyang was secretly helping to construct a reactor in Syria.

And the North Korean dictator has been ill in recent months, raising questions about whether Communist hard-liners in the military are now calling the shots. As a result, North Korea may be less willing to forego its nuclear program without first gaining full diplomatic relations with the United States - something no US administration has been willing to offer.

"People are in denial that you can put all this back in the bottle," said Henry Sokolski, a member of the US Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. "That is not going to happen unless there is a real change of heart on the part of the people running that place."

Bosworth, who received undergraduate and doctorate degrees from Dartmouth College, was a career foreign service officer before coming to the Tufts Fletcher School as dean in 2001.

Starting in the early 1960s, he served in diplomatic posts in Panama, Spain, and France, and later held several senior posts in the State Department in Washington. He is no stranger to tumultuous assignments; he was US ambassador to the Philippines when President Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in 1986.

But some Asia specialists were critical of Bosworth yesterday, citing his role in the so-called Agreed Framework reached by the Clinton administration and North Korea in 1994.

In return for North Korea's promise to freeze its nuclear program, the United States and other countries gave it fuel oil and pledged to provide it with two civilian nuclear power plants.

From 1995 to 1997, Bosworth served as director of the agency - the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization - that was established to implement the agreement.

Bosworth then served as ambassador to South Korea, but the Agreed Framework unraveled when it was discovered in 2002 that North Korea had been secretly enriching uranium. Under the 1994 pact, North Korea had promised to freeze all efforts to turn uranium and plutonium into weapons-grade material.

Some specialists, including Harrison, blame the Bush administration for the collapse of the 1994 agreement when it held up construction of the civilian reactors and labeled the country a member of the "axis of evil" in 2002 - thus giving hard-liners an opening to restart the North Korean nuclear program.

But Thomas H. Henriksen, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University, said yesterday he does not believe much will change with Bosworth back on the scene.

"Washington will attempt to engage North Korea, make accommodations, try to induce them to suspend their nuclear activities and not test missiles," he said. "I see all that as fruitless. The North Koreans are never going to give up their nuclear weapons, and we have to figure out a policy on how to reconcile ourselves with that."

Nevertheless, Bosworth, who declined a request for an interview, appears to believe that by reengaging North Korea the United States can reach a better agreement.

He wrote in Newsweek magazine last year that North Korea wants "more than anything" a friendly relationship with the United States.

Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com