WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States should employ more aggressive sticks and carrots to try to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear programs, according to an independent U.S. think tank report released on Tuesday.
The Council on Foreign Relations report criticized U.S. President Barack Obama's approach as a "halfhearted" effort to roll back North Korea's nuclear capabilities and suggested it may amount to U.S. acquiescence in Pyongyang's atomic status.
The study, carried out by an independent task force of 23 members including Democrats and Republicans, proposed a more muscular approach toward the secretive, communist state, which carried out nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.
Washington has struggled to convince Pyongyang to resume multi-party talks to end its nuclear ambitions. The March sinking of a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors and which the South blamed on the North complicated matters.
"The Task Force recommends a denuclearization strategy that includes elements of both coercion and diplomacy," said the report, written by former civilian and military officials with direct experience crafting U.S. policy toward North Korea.
The group identified four U.S. options: acquiescing in North Korea's nuclear capability; imposing regime change; managing the threat by containing North Korea's proliferation of nuclear material and expertise and its missile development; and actively trying to roll back its nuclear capability.
The group rejected the first two options and suggested that managing the threat -- which it described as coming closest to Obama's current strategy -- would not solve the problem.
Instead, it argued for actively trying to reverse North Korea's nuclear capability.
The group proposed tackling the issues in the following order: preventing North Korean nuclear proliferation; keeping it from mating a warhead to a missile; denuclearization; contingency planning for possible instability; promoting wider engagement with North Koreans and improving their daily lives.
'ROLLBACK VERY UNLIKELY'
Among its specific recommendations are:
-- greater vigilance to prevent North Korea's transfer of nuclear weapons technology or fissile material to others;
-- warning Pyongyang that such proliferation, or even an unexplained transfer of nuclear materials to non-state actors, could invite direct U.S. retaliation against North Korea;
-- tightening export controls to prevent North Korea from importing items with dual civilian and military uses;
-- strictly enforcing U.N. Security Council resolutions to limit North Korean exports of nuclear and missile technology;
-- testing North Korea's willingness to open bilateral talks on a missile testing moratorium by authorizing such talks between senior U.S. and North Korean officials;
-- pursuing diplomatic engagement backed by coordinated pressure by North Korea's neighbors;
-- offering Pyongyang inducements, including energy and economic aid and improved U.S.-North Korean relations.
The report included dissenting views by task force members, including former State Department official Stanley Roth, who argued that "rollback" was not the best policy prescription.
"The loss of leverage after the North exploded two nuclear devices, plus the unwillingness of some regional players to endorse and, more importantly, enforce tough sanctions, makes rollback very unlikely to be viable," Roth wrote.
"The current policy, which the Task Force has labeled as manage and contain while remaining publicly committed to rollback, strikes me as the best we're going to get until regime change comes to North Korea," he added. "Rather than describe current policy as halfhearted, I view it as pragmatic and prudent."
(Editing by Paul Simao)
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