N.Korea Nuclear Revelations Reduce U.S. Options
Fri April 25, 2003 04:25 AM ET
By Jane Macartney, Asian Diplomatic Correspondent
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Do they or don't they? If North Korea really has nuclear arms, that not only confirms Washington's worst suspicions, it confounds policymakers on both sides of the Pacific.
And it will leave those within striking distance wondering if their world has just become a much more dangerous place.
That isolated North Korea, a last bastion of Cold War-style communism, possesses nuclear weapons will come as no surprise to the United States, which has long said Pyongyang could have at least one or two atomic bombs.
Nor will it shock China, whose intelligence suggests its reclusive friend and neighbor may have even more.
"Saying that they have these weapons is a very significant bargaining counter in the face of U.S. demands that they denuclearize," said James Cotton, North Korea expert at the Australian National Defense Academy in Canberra.
"What would the Americans give in return?" he said.
The short answer is very little, say analysts. To be seen as rewarding North Korean bad behavior could be political suicide.
The United States says the North Korean revelation came in three days of talks that ended on Friday in Beijing.
The meetings were the first formal U.S.-North Korea contacts since last October when the nuclear crisis erupted after U.S. officials said Pyongyang had admitted to secretly developing highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.
That nuclear arms now augment North Korea's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction puts Washington in an extremely uncomfortable position, and within only days of the U.S. military victory in Iraq.
PAINTED INTO A CORNER
President Bush, who has lumped North Korea with Iraq and Iran in an "axis of evil," can either accept Pyongyang in the elite ranks of nuclear powers and try to turn back the clock by buying off the impoverished state, or he can look to military options.
Few other choices are open to him, analysts say.
"They have painted themselves into a corner," said Daniel Pinkston, senior research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies with the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
If the aim of diplomacy is to ensure a beneficial outcome, these talks after months of saber-rattling may not have helped.
"If this is the outcome, that strategy didn't result in making the U.S. more secure," said Pinkston.
And that was North Korea's intention -- if indeed Pyongyang's negotiator did take U.S. negotiator James Kelly aside at the talks and whisper in his ear that North Korea had gone nuclear.
"They have been saying for the last few weeks that you need to have a deterrent to prevent an Iraqi-type outcome," said Cotton. "If you intend to produce a deterrent this would fit in with that objective. That they said it doesn't mean it's true."
Most analysts have little doubt that North Korea has what it says it has, although its delivery systems are believed to be limited in terms of distance as well as inaccurate.
Thus this week's talks may have given the two sides an opportunity to outline their positions, and could even lead to another meeting, but they also raised the stakes.
A MILITARY SOLUTION?
The fear is over whether the United States concludes that the North Koreans will sell bombs or fissile material, said Marcus Noland, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington.
"If the North Koreans had half a dozen nuclear weapons for home use and for use to deter, then people here could accept that. The idea that they would sell these to al Qaeda and they could end up in Chicago or Los Angeles would be unacceptable.
"But does the U.S. have any credible military options? The short answer is no."
That means talks intended to break months of deadlock will result in more deadlock.
"The bottom lines of the two parties are contradictory," said Cotton. "These can't be accommodated in a single package so we are looking at a prolonged standoff."
China agreed. "I think there will be future talks. But it is hard to believe future talks will achieve results very soon," said Yan Xuetong, head of the Institute for International Affairs at Beijing's Tsinghua University.
"I think our government was worried that both sides would use this dialogue to serve their own purpose, meaning they sit at the table and from the very beginning they don't want to reach agreement with each other."
So what of the attack option? Any weapons would not be stored at the Yongbyon nuclear plant, thus rendering a surgical strike virtually useless. U.S. intelligence does not know all the hiding places of North Korea's highly enriched uranium, but believes some is buried so deep underground as to be untouchable.
An invasion to carry out a cave-by-cave search would need the support of nations in the region.
"I can't believe China, South Korea or Japan have the stomach to pressure North Korea in the way Bush wants to exert pressure," said Noland. That lack of consensus could widen any differences between the positions of the United States and regional powers.
And that makes a pivotal player of China, host and midwife to this week's talks and provider of fuel and food to the North.
"It now goes back to the issue of China," said Noland.
"How are the Chinese going to react to this? Will they be willing to engage in some coercion? Are they willing to regard a nuclear North Korea and all it entails as sufficiently worrisome to turn the screws?"
Beijing worries a nuclear North Korea could prompt an arms race as Japan and even South Korea and Taiwan upgrade their arsenals to counter Pyongyang's deterrent force.
reuters.com
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