KOREA-U.S.: Korea Talks Become Another Failed Opportunity

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Apr 22 1997 (IPS) - Hopes that the latest round of talks between North and South Korea could be the start of a peace process between them have faded once more as Pyongyang and Washington haggle over whether the United States will send food aid to the North.

North Korea’s deputy foreign minister, Kim Gye Gwan, remained in New York Tuesday with a team of diplomats while awaiting instructions from Pyongyang on how to proceed with peace talks with South Korean and U.S. diplomats here.

But any lingering chance that the talks could result in a wider, four-party peace negotiation including China ended Tuesday morning when Kim’s South Korean counterpart, Assistant Foreign Minister Song Young Shik, left for Seoul.

South Korean diplomats confirmed there were no plans for the high-level team to return, although the three nations are still proceeding with lower-level talks here.

That departure likely means the end of a year-long campaign by the United States and South Korea to prod North Korea to accept peace talks that would finally end the 1950-53 Korean War. The Cold War conflict ended inconclusively with an armistice and the maintenance of U.N. troops in a demilitarised zone between the Communist North and capitalist South.

“As for now, we don’t have any concrete schedule” to return to talks, South Korean spokesman Ji Won Suh told IPS. Yet Suh refused to characterise the talks as a failure, noting, “We confirmed each other’s stance in a very friendly atmosphere. The talk was very sincere, with no disputes.”

Despite the absence of the angry rhetoric that has traditionally marked meetings between the China-backed North and the U.S.-supported South, the meeting ended inconclusively, with Washington and North Korea at odds on how to proceed to peace talks.

“(North Korea) put on concessions for additional, direct government-level food aid and for the United States to lift economic sanctions” against Pyongyang before it would agree to four-party peace talks, Suh said. “The United States and South Korea made it clear that theycould not accept (the preconditions).”

Suh rejected the idea that the stalling of the talks represents an end to the peace process, however. He said Seoul sees the interruption as “part of the process.”

Ultimately, the two sides had different conceptions of what the peace talks would look like, argued Selig Harrison, an analyst on Korean affairs at the Woodrow Wilson Centre for Scholars in Washington.

Washington and Seoul want preliminary meetings on four-way talks by next month, followed by actual peace negotiations by the end of June. But Pyongyang found that schedule too abrupt, Harrison said, and held out instead for clear U.S. commitments to deliver some 1.5 million tonnes of food aid this year, and a similar amount next year.

Food aid is particularly crucial for the North, with the World Food Programme (WFP) estimating that it may need some 200,000 metric tonnes of food in the short term to avert famine following two consecutive years of heavy flooding. North Korean leaders say that food stocks in the country may be exhausted by the beginning of May.

Washington last week announced it would send 50,000 metric tonnes of corn to North Korea, but has insisted that food considerations must be kept separate from the peace talks. South Korea has donated six million dollars for food aid to the North, or enough to buy nearly 10,000 tonnes of corn and soy, the WFP says.

Some U.S. experts worry privately that Pyongyang may hold out for firm food aid commitments and then avoid following through with the peace talks.

“The North Koreans need to make a fundamental decision: Do they want to go forward with four-party talks or not?” said U.S. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, who added Monday that Washington was prepared to provide additional food aid to the North but not as a precondition for the talks.

“I think there are differences within Pyongyang and within Washington,” Harrison said. In North Korea, he added, “there are some hardliners who say (the North) shouldn’t be reduced to begging for food.”

Leaders in Pyongyang have also been stung by the defection of Communist Party ideologue Hwang Jang Yop, a top leader who arrived in Seoul this week from a brief stay in the Philippines and promptly warned that Northern hardliners may be preparing for war. Hwang’s defection and questioning of Pyongyang’s intentions have embarrassed the North, although U.S. diplomats are not convinced the North poses a threat for now.