What's happening in N. Korea
U.S. Seeks Regional Pressure on N. Korea
Russia and Japan Convey Strong Messages to Kim, but S. Korea and China Seek Direct Diplomacy
URL:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56240-2002Dec30.html
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 31, 2002; Page A14
The Bush administration has concluded that the regional powers in Asia, especially China and Russia, must take a greater role in resolving the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, and it is urging those nations to exert maximum pressure on the North Korean regime, officials said yesterday.
The administration's plan would allow U.S. officials to keep focused on the looming confrontation with Iraq in the coming weeks and also sidestep the question of direct talks between the United States and North Korea while it pursues a diplomatic resolution. The administration has insisted it will not engage in discussions with North Korea unless it verifies that it had dismantled a recently discovered nuclear weapons program.
In recent weeks, the administration has sent repeated messages to North Korea to end its nuclear ambitions through each of the key powers in the region -- China, Russia, Japan and South Korea -- with the expectation that each nation would back up the U.S. message with its own statement of concern. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell signaled this approach when he made the rounds of the Sunday morning talk shows, telling interviewers "we have ways of communicating with the North Koreans."
In the view of U.S. officials, the Russians and the Japanese have been the most aggressive in relaying tough messages from the United States to North Korea, while China and South Korea have been more ambivalent about pursuing a hard-nosed approach without direct U.S. participation. South Korea's president yesterday faulted the administration's stance, telling his cabinet that "pressure and isolation have never been successful with communist countries -- Cuba is one example."
The administration's efforts to put more of the onus on regional allies are hampered by the fact that there is no regional security organization, such as NATO, and because the regional powers have long and complex histories of warfare and betrayal with one another. The U.S. role in northern Asia, including its 37,000 troops in South Korea, is also a source of tension.
North Korea dramatically raised the stakes last week when, in response to administration decision to cut off fuel oil deliveries, it said it would evict international weapons inspectors and restart a plutonium reactor that had been shuttered as part of a 1994 accord brokered by the Clinton administration. Pyongyang has also admitted a newer effort to produce enriched uranium for possible use in nuclear weapons.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has privately suggested convening a meeting of diplomats from all six nations, including North Korea and the United States, as a way of elevating the back-channel conversations into a more formal setting. U.S. officials are not opposed to the idea, believing it would not violate their pledge against direct talks. But China has been resistant, arguing that the North Koreans would not show up.
"The Chinese have come back and said, 'you need to talk to them,' which raises the question about whether they are carrying our water to Pyongyang or they are carrying Pyongyang's water to us," one U.S. official said.
At a lower level, the United States can also directly communicate with the North Koreans via the United Nations missions, but little use has been made of that conduit in recent weeks. Donald P. Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and chairman of the Korea Society, said yesterday that a regional conference, along the lines suggested by Putin, "would be a face-saving way to sit down and talk to the North Koreans."
North Korea has insisted on direct talks to resolve the dispute, in particular calling for Washington to guarantee North Korea's security with a nonaggression pact. "It is quite self-evident that dialogue is impossible without sitting face to face and a peaceful settlement of the issue would be unthinkable without dialogue," a North Korean foreign ministry statement said on Sunday.
Next week, the administration expects to seek a censure of North Korea at an emergency meeting of the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, an arm of the United Nations. If North Korea still refuses to back down, then the U.N. Security Council would be expected to take up the matter, where once again the administration hopes China and Russia will play important roles.
U.S. officials said they are trying to emphasize that this is as much a regional issue as an international conflict, and that each of the four powers in northern Asia must face up to their own responsibilities to keep the Korean peninsula nuclear-free. U.S. officials have not hesitated to note to their Chinese counterparts that the United States has kept Japan from becoming a nuclear power for a half-century, and that China now owes the United States a return favor on the Korean peninsula.
During the weeks of discussions over the Korean crisis, the Chinese have privately been disdainful about North Korea's ability to sustain a nuclear program, making it difficult to convince the Chinese to take a harder line, one official said.
In fact, despite the long ties between China and North Korea, administration officials increasingly believe that Russia may have more influence with North Korea and its mercurial leader, Kim Jong Il. Russia has been developing economic interests in North Korea, including a new railway crossing the inter-Korean border that Moscow hopes can join the Trans-Siberian, connecting Russia with Western Europe, while Putin is eager to demonstrate his abilities on the diplomatic stage.
Gregg said the Chinese "are willing to do a certain amount, but they have real concerns about a continued U.S. role in the region," especially any impression that they are simply doing the U.S. bidding. The Russians, by contrast, appeared to have developed an increasingly close relationship with the North Koreans. He said that on a recent visit to Pyongyang, he detected a "positive tone" when North Korean officials discussed Putin.
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