North Korea's clever game
North Korea's clever game
(Filed: 23/02/2005)
To engage in diplomacy with North Korea is to court exasperation. That has long been the experience of America, which found that Pyongyang had used a bilateral agreement of 1994 as a cover to pursue its nuclear weapons ambitions.
It is now the turn of China, which is hosting six-power talks aimed at thwarting those ambitions, to have its patience tested. Having attended three rounds of discussions in Beijing, the North Koreans announced on February 10 that they had nuclear weapons and would boycott the regional forum.
However, a visit to Pyongyang by a Chinese envoy may have occasioned a change of heart. The North said yesterday that it would return to the negotiating table provided the conditions were right. What that meant was not specified but it indicates that China, which provides its maverick neighbour with much of its fuel and food, retains some leverage across the Yalu River.
Washington's goals on the peninsula are straightforward: to prevent a rogue state from being able to deliver a nuclear payload and from selling nuclear materials around the world. The problem lies in implementation. Diplomacy has made next to no progress and military action could invite a North Korean rocket attack on Seoul. Beijing's position is more complex. It wants Pyongyang to stop its plutonium and uranium production for fear that it could persuade Japan to go nuclear. Regime change is anathema because it could lead to increased American influence in East Asia. In short, China seeks to maintain the political status quo across the Yalu while trying to persuade Washington to offer greater inducement to the North to make concessions on nuclear matters.
Of the other parties to the talks, Japan, South Korea and Russia, the first, traumatised by the firing of a North Korean rocket over the main island of Honshu in 1998, is hardening its attitude to Pyongyang. The prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, has made two visits to the North but the relationship remains bedevilled by the failure to return the remains of Japanese kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s. Last month the remains of a woman turned out, after DNA testing, to be those of two unidentified persons. Meanwhile, South Korea under Roh Moo-hyun pursues a policy of detente with the North, with the prime aim of preventing its precipitate collapse.
The six powers say they have the same goal, that of a nuclear-free peninsula, but varying perspectives mean that progress is snail-like. Christopher Hill, the American envoy to the stalled talks, yesterday emphasised the importance of a co-ordinated approach. Until that is achieved, the wily North Koreans will continue to play on their interlocutors' differences.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
(Filed: 23/02/2005)
To engage in diplomacy with North Korea is to court exasperation. That has long been the experience of America, which found that Pyongyang had used a bilateral agreement of 1994 as a cover to pursue its nuclear weapons ambitions.
It is now the turn of China, which is hosting six-power talks aimed at thwarting those ambitions, to have its patience tested. Having attended three rounds of discussions in Beijing, the North Koreans announced on February 10 that they had nuclear weapons and would boycott the regional forum.
However, a visit to Pyongyang by a Chinese envoy may have occasioned a change of heart. The North said yesterday that it would return to the negotiating table provided the conditions were right. What that meant was not specified but it indicates that China, which provides its maverick neighbour with much of its fuel and food, retains some leverage across the Yalu River.
Washington's goals on the peninsula are straightforward: to prevent a rogue state from being able to deliver a nuclear payload and from selling nuclear materials around the world. The problem lies in implementation. Diplomacy has made next to no progress and military action could invite a North Korean rocket attack on Seoul. Beijing's position is more complex. It wants Pyongyang to stop its plutonium and uranium production for fear that it could persuade Japan to go nuclear. Regime change is anathema because it could lead to increased American influence in East Asia. In short, China seeks to maintain the political status quo across the Yalu while trying to persuade Washington to offer greater inducement to the North to make concessions on nuclear matters.
Of the other parties to the talks, Japan, South Korea and Russia, the first, traumatised by the firing of a North Korean rocket over the main island of Honshu in 1998, is hardening its attitude to Pyongyang. The prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, has made two visits to the North but the relationship remains bedevilled by the failure to return the remains of Japanese kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s. Last month the remains of a woman turned out, after DNA testing, to be those of two unidentified persons. Meanwhile, South Korea under Roh Moo-hyun pursues a policy of detente with the North, with the prime aim of preventing its precipitate collapse.
The six powers say they have the same goal, that of a nuclear-free peninsula, but varying perspectives mean that progress is snail-like. Christopher Hill, the American envoy to the stalled talks, yesterday emphasised the importance of a co-ordinated approach. Until that is achieved, the wily North Koreans will continue to play on their interlocutors' differences.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
posted by JimG at 8:40 AM
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