Asia-Pacific, Headlines, North America

POLITICS: U.S. Must Move Toward North Korea – Experts

Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Sep 4 2003 (IPS) - North Korea must be more flexible in trying to negotiate an end to the standoff with the United States over its nuclear programme, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday, but experts say Washington also has room to bend.

A week after talks ended between the belligerents and four of North Korea’s neighbours, Pyongyang has sent conflicting signals about the discussions – which appeared to achieve little – and future talks rumoured for October.

On Wednesday, the nation’s parliament echoed one post-meeting statement from leaders of the country officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which trashed the talks as a waste of time and a ”trick” by Washington.

According to KCNA, the North’s official news agency, the parliament supported the government’s decision to "keep and increase its nuclear deterrent force".

After a meeting Wednesday with South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-Kwan, Powell called the recent pronouncements ”threats and truculent statements that are designed to try to frighten the international community or to try to frighten us”.

”We have a comprehensive policy," he continued. "It’s been explained to our friends. Our friends agree with us, we agree with them, and we’ll continue to pursue it. And we hope that the North Koreans will understand the seriousness of our position and our proposals and will respond in a serious way and not with these kinds of rhetorical threats.”

Yet one of those "friends" has publicly pushed Washington to do more to come to an agreement with Pyongyang, which many experts believe is close to testing a nuclear weapon, leverage it is wielding in a bid to wrangle a non-aggression treaty with the United States and economic assistance from the west.

On Monday, China’s vice foreign minister, who hosted last week’s three-day meeting in Beijing, reportedly called the United States the "main obstacle" to an agreement over North Korea.

South Korea, Japan and Russia were the other nations involved in last week’s talks.

The U.S. position certainly provokes doubts, according to Eric Heginbotham, a senior fellow in Asian studies at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

"How far would North Korea have to go before we would be willing to reciprocate?" he said in an interview. "If, for example, they were willing to make a statement saying that they were going to dismantle their nuclear programme, could we then go ahead and sign an agreement where there would be action by both sides?"

In May, the council released a report calling for Washington to seriously engage in North Korea by assigning a senior official to work full-time on the dossier, among other things.

Such a policy might at least convince neighbouring nations like South Korea and Japan that the United States had genuinely tried to reach agreement in the event that the crisis grew and the administration took a hardline approach advocated by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and others.

In July, another hawk, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, called North Korean leader Kim Jong Il a "dictator" and tyrant", in what many analysts saw as a provocation that hardliners hoped would lead Pyongyang to cancel last week’s talks.

Another arm of the administration, led by Powell, has pushed for continued dialogue with North Korea.

The current crisis grew out of Pyongyang’s announcement last October that it had a secret programme to make highly enriched uranium (HEU).

Since then, the North has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), asserted that it possesses nuclear weapons and declared that it is reprocessing spent fuel from the Yongbyon nuclear plant, whose operations were frozen under the 1994 ”Agreed Framework” accord between Pyongyang and Washington.

If true – something that intelligence agencies have been unable to confirm – Pyongyang could produce half a dozen nuclear bombs by year’s end.

That prospect is a nightmare for U.S. national-security officials, who believe that North Korea, which is desperate for foreign exchange, would be willing to sell the weapons to all comers, including terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

Pyongyang has insisted that U.S. nuclear and proliferation concerns could be fully addressed if Washington agreed to negotiate a new accord that included a non-aggression pact and a U.S. pledge not to hinder its efforts to obtain international assistance, including loans and credits from agencies such as the World Bank.

The result: impasse. Washington has insisted it would not make new promises until Pyongyang permanently dismantled its HEU programme and refroze the Yongbyon operation. It said it was prepared to talk with the North about how this could be achieved, but only in a multilateral context involving other regional powers.

North Korea, on the other hand, insisted that Washington provide security assurances up front, before it addressed the nuclear-weapons programmes, and that the talks be unilateral, rather than multilateral.

But the North reversed that stance by agreeing to last week’s six-party talks in Beijing, and demonstrated an unexpected "willingness to engage", says Don Oberdorfer, a Korea specialist at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

"It’s not acceptable to the United States, but it’s moving in the right direction," he added.

Washington, on the other hand, "took a less flexible position than anyone expected, including me", Oberdorfer told IPS.

He believes the administration should adopt recommendations in the Council on Foreign Relations report and agree to negotiate security issues if Pyongyang assents to a verifiable freeze of its nuclear activities.

At the same time, North Korea must end those activities, said Oberdorfer. "They think it’s going to increase their security. I think if they continue, it will ensure their insecurity."

A North Korea nuclear build-up is a greater threat to peace than a possible U.S. attack on the Asian nation, added Heginbotham. But he said Washington is also playing a dangerous game.

"North Korea’s under a lot of pressure. They could cave (in). That’s kind of the administration’s gamble, I think. It’s not completely unreasonable. On the other hand, it’s very high-stakes and I’m not sure it’s very smart."