WASHINGTON -- Easing an Asian security threat, North Korea agreed yesterday to allow repeated inspections of an underground construction site that U.S. intelligence agencies suspect is part of a nuclear weapons program.

A senior U.S. official said the agreement grants inspectors the right to as many visits as necessary and lasting as long as required to satisfy them about North Korea's plans for the site.

The inspectors will have enough freedom "to be sure of what we're seeing," and not have to guess any longer about what is taking place, the official said.

U.S. officials will inspect the site in May and conduct a follow-up visit a year later. Ultimately, the administration hopes to persuade North Korea to convert the "national security" site into a civilian use, a senior official said.

Officials said no explicit American concessions were made in exchange for the inspections.

The agreement was reached in New York through negotiations led by Charles Kartman, a senior U.S. diplomat who deals with Asian affairs, and by Kim Gye Gwan, the North Korean vice foreign minister.

The United States rejected any direct payment in exchange for the inspections -- Pyongyang had asked for $300 million.

Washington earlier this month pledged 500,000 tons of additional food aid for North Korea's hungry population in response to another appeal for donations by the U.N. World Food Program.

James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman, announced that the United States would support a "very modest" privately run agricultural program intended to develop a better North Korean potato crop. An additional 100,000 tons of food would be made available to workers on the project. The discovery of the site at Kumchang-ri last year injected a new crisis into America's relations with the isolated Stalinist state, which confronts its neighbor South Korea with a formidable army while millions of its citizens reportedly are dying from hunger after years of drought, floods and mismanagement.

North Korea has denied that the site has any role in a nuclear weapons program, which would be in violation of a 1994 agreement, but acknowledges that it has an unspecified "national security" purpose.

The detection of the site threatened to derail the 1994 agreement, under which North Korea froze its nuclear-weapons program in exchange for the construction of a new civilian nuclear-energy plant largely paid for by Washington's Asian allies.

U.S. officials said that North Korea, in violation of the 1994 pact, was digging a cave inside a mountain with the possible intention of building a graphite-moderated reactor capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.

Spurgeon Keeny, president of the private Arms Control Association, praised the agreement as an "extremely encouraging" response to "one of the most troubling developments in the North Korean nuclear situation."

"Probably if they're allowing inspections, there's nothing alarming there to see," Keeny said. "The parallel agreement to provide humanitarian relief is also a favorable development."

But Robert Manning, who directs Asian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the deal amounted to a payoff to North Korea even though the administration denies any explicit link between Pyongyang's cooperation and the promise of food aid.

"They get caught cheating and they get rewarded -- what can I tell you?" he said. "There's this recurring pattern: We reward bad behavior."

The agreement hasn't put to rest fears that North Korea is still conducting a covert nuclear-weapons program at sites that have yet to be discovered.

In addition, Pyongyang is aggressively developing longer-range missiles. These could both expand its capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction and pose an even wider threat if North Korea decides to earn hard currency by exporting the missiles to other rogue states.

Besides announcing the deal on inspections, Rubin said the United States and North Korea would begin talks at the end of this month on curbing Pyongyang's missile program.

But North Korea said last week the United States was mistaken in thinking Washington could "check" the program.

The inspection agreement comes as the administration's North Korea policy is under growing threat from Congress, which has mandated a major review. The missile threat also has spurred congressional calls for accelerated development of a missile-defense program.

Led by former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, the review is expected to call for a far more comprehensive policy that replaces a series of separate negotiations on different issues.

The Perry panel is reported to be considering some of the recommendations of a report by Richard Armitage, a former Defense Department official.

His plan calls for replacing the current "fragmented" approach with a major exchange of phased economic aid and eventual normalization in exchange for North Korea's elimination of all dangerous weapons that could threaten the United States or its allies.

Pub Date: 3/17/99