Bush meets with South Korean leader

NEW YORK -- South Korea's leader traveled Sunday to the United States for consultations with President Bush on the North Korean nuclear crisis, keenly aware that Pyongyang will be looking for any sign of a rift as it plots strategy on its weapons development.\nBush and South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun will almost certainly take a different tack than in 2001, when Bush and the previous South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung, met in Washington. That summit exposed sharp differences in how the two allies viewed communist North Korea.\nEven though the policy differences remain, Bush and Roh are likely to reaffirm their military and economic partnership when they meet for the first time.\n"Previous South Korea-U.S. summits have been burdened by high expectations," Roh told reporters on a chartered Korean Air passenger plane before arriving Sunday afternoon in New York. "I hope the talks will confirm our common approach to resolving the North Korean nuclear issue, and also the importance of the South Korea-U.S. alliance."\nRoh said the summit won't yield "spectacular" results, and added: "On matters of detail, there are different points of view. But on the big matters of principle, we are in accord."\nThe sense of urgency about North Korea's military threat is far greater now than when Kim met Bush and spoke in favor of engaging the North. Bush said at the time he didn't trust North Korea and would suspend missile talks with it, embarrassing the South Koreans and infuriating North Korea.\nU.S. resolve has hardened in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. American officials say they want a peaceful end to the North Korean crisis, but some in the U.S. administration believe only a change of government in Pyongyang will fully resolve the problem.\nTension over the nuclear dispute spiked last month during the Beijing talks, when, according to U.S. officials, North Korea claimed to have nuclear weapons and threatened to use or export them, depending on U.S. actions.\nDuring the talks, U.S. officials said North Korea claimed it had reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods -- a move that could yield several atomic bombs within months.\nRoh, on his first trip to the United States as president, said he would discuss ways the United States and South Korea can cooperate to peacefully resolve the North's nuclear issue. Still, a solution to the nuclear dispute does not appear imminent.\nRoh visits as intelligence officials, lacking information because North Korea expelled onsite nuclear inspectors, probe whether North Korea is manufacturing plutonium.\nSouth Korea is eager for the United States to talk to North Korea, and U.S. officials did so in Beijing last month. But Washington demands that North Korea abandon its nuclear programs, and the North says it will only do so in exchange for security guarantees and economic aid.\nFurther complicating matters, a key North strategy is to try to exploit any perceived rift between the United States and South Korea. Any sign of a rift could also embolden North Korea as it plots strategy.\nRoh, who won the presidency partly by saying he wanted South Korea to be less reliant on the United States, is to spend two nights in New York City and meet Bush in Washington on Wednesday. He is to return to South Korea on May 17 after a stopover in San Francisco.\nWashington could eventually pursue economic sanctions against North Korea through the U.N. Security Council. The North has said such a step would amount to a declaration of war, and it would undermine the South's faltering efforts to reconcile with its neighbor.\nNorth Korea warned Sunday that it would take "emergency measures" if the United States does not drop what it described as a hostile policy toward the communist country.\nThe two leaders are also likely to discuss the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, as Washington considers the redeployment or reduction of forces abroad.\nThe issue is sensitive in South Korea, where Roh drew electoral support from youths who staged demonstrations last year against the U.S. military after the deaths of two girls hit by a U.S. military vehicle.\nBut Roh opposes plans to pull U.S. troops back from the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas, saying they should be a bargaining chip in any talks with North Korea on reducing its forces along the border.\nSouth Korea and the United States are "out of step" over when to pull back the 2nd Infantry Division from the DMZ, Roh said on television recently.\nAt the same time, he said: "Some people seem to believe, 'If we don't have the U.S. military, we will all die.' That's simply not true."\nHur Moon-young, a North Korea expert, said he hoped Roh would recognize that he has to get along with the world's only superpower.\n"Without a good relationship with the United States, it's impossible to make a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula as well as solve the nuclear problem," Hur said.