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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (4401)	2/14/2005 6:17:36 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

Did Kim Jung Il miscalculate? China may now be forced to trump N. Korea's playing the nuclear card. By Jim Bencivenga \| csmonitor.com North Korea declared itself a nuclear power on Thursday. The Stalinist state coupled a unilateral admission of possessing nuclear weapons with the assertion that it would not take part in "six-nation talks aimed at ending the [nuclear arms] crisis," on the Korean peninsula. Both statements appeared to catch the US by surprise, as well as China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia, despite the fact that this was the third time in two years that N. Korea pulled the diplomatic rug out from under international talks. A consensus of the parties involved seemed to be that the next move was China's responsibility to confront its ally with the untenable position of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula. Top Japanese officials appeared calm in the face of North Korea's abrupt announcement Thursday, reports The Mainichi Daily News. Downplaying the new development, "Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said that Tokyo's stance of trying to persuade Pyongyang to take part in the six-nation talks would not change." The mainstream South Korean press called on the North to be realistic and come to terms with the consequences of its actions. The Chosun Ibo wrote of the imperative for North Korea to awaken from the self-induced trance where it believes it can gain something only when it takes on the international community head-on. When the other side can read your cards so clearly, an attachment to the strategies of the past could mean that the situation spirals out of control ? with Pyongyang itself the ultimate victim. The JoonAng Daily was uncharacteristically direct: If the North chooses to go against the unanimous demands of the international community like this, an enormous tragedy is inevitable in the end. It is evident that no country, including South Korea, United States and Japan, will give in to such threats by North Korea because peace on the Korean Peninsula is so closely related to their national interests. The same applies for China. The only route for Kim Jong-il to maintain the regime and rebuild the crumbled economy is through giving up its nuclear program. We urge North Korea to return to talks at once. The South Korean government must also reconsider its approach towards the North from the starting point. Most of all, it must get rid of the belief that North Korea will act according to our will if we are considerate of its position. There also is no room for error in cooperating with the United States. The lead editorial in Friday's Times of London at first characterizes the weapons pronouncement as deja vu in dealing with the unpredictable Kim Jung Il. But it concludes that N. Korea will now force China's hand. The truth about North Korea's nuclear capability cannot be verified, but yesterday's boast is compatible with available intelligence. Pyongyang has never before gone further than to claim that it possessed a "nuclear deterrent," had weaponized plutonium and was planning weapons tests.... The regime of Kim Jong Il may not have intended to make life more difficult for Beijing, but it has surely done so. China's stance throughout has been that it opposes a nuclear-armed Korean peninsula, but that since it was unclear whether North Korea was even close to the point of developing actual nuclear weapons, the US and Japan should have the patience to fall in with China's preferred strategy of gradual engagement. In its lead editorial Friday, The Christian Science Monitor places China in the hotseat. "It must consider the reality of a nuclear armed N. Korea in light of its interests in the region." North Korea crossed a red line in international diplomacy Thursday by announcing that it has nuclear weapons. Leaders in Japan, the US, and elsewhere must now deal with their own public's fears of nuclear weapons and act as if North Korea does possess a viable atomic bomb. The US is right to hold China accountable for letting its ally become a nuclear-weapons exporter. But if Mr. Bush is pushed to change tactics now, it should be to put more pressure on China to curb North Korea's nuclear program through economic means. China can't afford to let Japan react and go nuclear, or further push the US to set up a missile-defense shield. If Beijing really believes the North has the bomb, it will act now. The Bush administration's real concern, says the Monitor, is not "that the North would use a bomb or even has one, but that it would export nuclear components and bomb-building knowledge to other rogue states and to terrorists." This further pressures China to act. Clearly, N. Korea may have miscalculated the Chinese response, writes The Sydney Morning Herald. What is becoming clear, however, is that Beijing is not ready to make the same sacrifice again for a communist ally that has become a political embarrassment and a threat to the stability on which China's own economic progress depends. China still feels that "little gratitude" has ever been shown for "the huge casualties involved in saving the North Korean regime in 1950-53," and that N. Korea may be overestimating the level of support it can expect, says the Herald. Chinese scholars in government think tanks say a high degree of ambiguity has been deliberately inserted by the country's leadership under President Hu Jintao into Beijing's treaty obligations to North Korea. Chinese economic pressure is the only viable approach given the reality that the US's hands are tied when it comes to a military response, says columnist Greg Sheridan, in The Australian. He sees "three devastating road blocks" confronting the US, Japan, and South Korea: One, Washington could not be sure it had got all North Korea's nuclear facilities in any attack. Two, the US military is already fully extended in Iraq. Three, North Korea has vast batteries of artillery, deeply embedded in rugged mountainside, all trained on the South Korean capital, Seoul. csmonitor.com