Nuclear talks yield only questions
Saturday, April 26, 2003
asia.scmp.com
NAILENE CHOU WIEST in Beijing and REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Seoul and Tokyo
The talking is over and the guessing has begun.
Meetings in Beijing between US and North Korean officials have shed little light on several murky issues that threaten to plunge northeast Asia into a vicious circle of diplomatic confrontation and possibly weapons proliferation.
What is clear is that both sides remain as far apart as ever.
There are more questions than answers. What stage has North Korea's suspected drive for a nuclear arsenal reached? How far is the US willing to go to derail Kim Jong-il's plans? And what is the price tag North Korea is attaching to a peaceful solution to the crisis?
The talks ended yesterday after US officials said North Korea claimed to have nuclear weapons and might test, export or use them. North Korea said it had presented a new proposal to resolve the dispute, but it was ignored. There were no further details.
US officials have said they are seeking the "verifiable and irreversible" elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.
Despite the apparent impasse, both sides agreed to meet again, according to China's Foreign Ministry, which hosted the meeting.
South Korean officials said they were looking into the alleged North Korean claim of nuclear capability. Some analysts suggested North Korea was bluffing in a further bid to scrape concessions out of the US.
North Korean delegate Li Gun told US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly that North Korea had reprocessed all 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, a senior US official in Washington said. This claim was widely doubted yesterday but may well have been the trigger for the premature ending of the talks late on Thursday. There was only a brief meeting yesterday morning.
If it is the case, North Korea will be close to adding six to eight additional warheads to a couple that it has long been suspected to have.
A US official said Mr Li made the comments about the fuel rods at a plenary session, while the other comments on its nuclear activities were made at a social gathering on Wednesday. North Korea has disputed that it made that claim.
In a report carried by the North's KCNA news agency, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said Mr Li "set out a new proposal for the settlement of the nuclear issue". The report did not elaborate on the contents of the offer.
The spokesman said Mr Kelly did not budge from the US demand for North Korea to scrap its alleged nuclear programmes and he did not present a new solution to the crisis.
In a possible reference to North Korea's demand for a non-aggression treaty with Washington, the spokesman said Mr Kelly "persistently avoided the discussion on the essential issues to be discussed between both sides".
The US has ruled out such a treaty but says some sort of written security guarantee might be considered.
North Korea had repeatedly said it believes the US plans to invade it after the Iraq war.
China issued a statement saying the talks ended with handshakes and a commitment by all parties to arrange further talks through diplomatic channels. "These talks permitted all parties to express clearly their positions, fully exchange views and increase mutual understanding," it said.
Mr Kelly departed soon after the talks and headed for Seoul and Japan for consultations.
The talks were the first high-level US-North Korean contact since tensions over North Korea's nuclear ambitions spiked in October when the US claimed North Korea had admitted it had a secret nuclear programme in violation of a 1994 pact.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said any attempts by the North Korean government to intimidate the United States would fail.
President George W. Bush said the talks gave the US "an opportunity to say to the North Koreans, `We are not going to be threatened' ". "See, they're back to the old blackmail game," he said. Mr Bush said the world needed to focus on the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the materials used to make them.
Chinese analysts cautioned against writing off the talks in Beijing as futile. "The three sides got the chance to size up each other," said a former diplomat, now an analyst at a government think-tank.
One analyst said the rupture of the talks was unfortunate, but North Korea was not solely to blame. At the first round of meetings, the positions put forth by both sides were necessarily ambiguous. "It appears that the Americans have tried to stir public opinion against North Korea," he said.
A Korean affairs expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Li Dunqiu, said that after the three-way talks gave way to bilateral talks between US and China and between China and North Korea, China's role became more important. "Formerly, North Korea had wanted China just to host the meeting, while America wished to see a more active Chinese participation," he said. "The stalemate put China in a pivotal position." But this format was unlikely to be acceptable to the US or North Korea.
"The two sides will have to agree to talk again," he said. "They can't use China as go-between for ever." |
