| |
Russia's lost Korean
opportunity
By Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW - Despite having been put on the
sidelines over Pyongyang's nuclear issue, Russia is
still keen to demonstrate that it has sufficient
influence to help ease tensions over North Korea and its
nuclear ambitions.
Russia is ready to host "any
meetings and talks, to help in any form so as to
normalize the situation" around North Korea, Russian
President Vladimir Putin stated in a British
Broadcasting Corp interview on Sunday. "It is very
sensitive issue for Russia due to proximity to Russian
border," he said.
However, the Russia leader
argued that Pyongyang was unlikely to draft any
aggressive plans. "North Korea is now in such a state
that I do not have any reasons to believe that this
country has any aggressive intentions."
Addressing an annual press conference last
Friday, Putin also urged providing Pyongyang with
guarantees of "non-aggression". He also said all
interested parties, including South Korea, Japan, China,
the United States and Russia, should take part in
solving the controversy over Pyongyang's nuclear
program.
In a small but symbolic development, on
Tuesday construction of a Russian Orthodox church
started in downtown Pyongyang. Russia's ambassador to
North Korea, Andrei Karlov, reportedly commented that a
return of the Russian Orthodox faith to that country was
of "great importance for developing relations between
Russian and [North Korea]". Reportedly, the idea to
build an Orthodox church in Pyongyang occurred to North
Korean leader Kim Jong-il during his rail trip to Russia
in 2001.
Moreover, it has been reported that
last month Kim sent a letter to Putin seeking his help
in breaking the stalemate in the talks with the United
States over the nuclear crisis.
Putin, who is
keen to boost Russia's profile in East Asia, has sought
a greater role in trying to resolve the dispute on the
Korean Peninsula. When he and Chinese President Hu
Jintao met in Moscow on May 27, they declared that the
use of force to resolve Washington's standoff with North
Korea would be "unacceptable".
With a backdrop of
Moscow's once-close ties with Pyongyang, supportive
pronouncements by Putin may have raised hopes that
Russia was about to use its much-heralded leverage power
with North Korea.
Russia was clearly sidelined
when North Korea, the United States and China held talks
on the nuclear crisis in Beijing in April. Washington
has reportedly declined Pyongyang's offer of compromise
in exchange for guarantees of its survival, as well as
economic help. China has been demanding that no nuclear
weapons should exist on the Korean Peninsula.
Subsequently, no apparent progress was made.
Russia's absence from the April talks has been
explained as a consequence of Moscow's flawed mediation
attempts. In January, Putin sent a special envoy, Deputy
Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, to China, North
Korea and the United States in an effort to defuse
international concerns over Pyongyang's nuclear threats.
However, Losyukov's planned US trip failed to
materialize, indicating that Russian mediation services
were not needed in Washington.
Subsequently,
even Russian media started questioning the Kremlin's
ability to deal with Pyongyang. This month, the
influential Kommersant daily commented that "Washington
was pushing Russia out of the Korean Peninsula", as
Russia was unlikely to join multilateral talks on North
Korea in July or August. The daily also commented that
Moscow had made a mistake when Losyukov unsuccessfully
tried to become a mediator between Washington and
Pyongyang.
According to Kommersant, Russia's
talk about multilateral security guarantees merely sent
a wrong signal to Pyongyang and then North Koreans
intensified their nuclear blackmail. In the wake of
Losyukov's failure, Russia lost its say in Korean
affairs, the daily wrote. Despite organizing two rail
trips for Kim, Russia has no way to influence Pyongyang,
Kommersant wrote.
Not surprisingly, Losyukov
strongly dismissed these claims. "No issues relative to
North Korean can be solved without Russia, it is
obvious," Losyukov told journalists in Moscow. "Only
those who do not know anything about the process of
Korean settlement and Russia's role can claim that
Russia is being pushed out of this process," Losyukov
stated. "Russia is taking an active part in this process
by maintaining dialogue with North Korean leadership,"
he added without revealing any concrete details.
Losyukov stated that the crisis over North
Korea's resumption of its nuclear program is primarily a
dispute between North Korea and the United States. He
conceded that the situation around North Korea has been
deteriorating mainly because of the continued lack of
consensus between Washington and Pyongyang. Losyukov
also stated that Moscow backed the trilateral format of
talks among the US, North Korea and China.
Therefore, the Kremlin pledged to host talks to
normalize the situation around North Korea. However,
Moscow declined to back a similar offer by the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations to host direct
talks between the US and North Korean representatives.
"This initiative will not be developed," Losyukov stated
on June 11.
The Soviet Union was a close ally of
reclusive North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War,
which resulted in the division of the peninsula between
the communist North and the US-backed South. Yet
relations between Moscow and Pyongyang have been less
cordial since the 1991 collapse of Soviet rule and
Russia's turbulent transition to the market economy.
Russia, North Korea's neighbor thanks to a
narrow land border near Vladivostok, has sharply
downgraded its ties with that country in the past
decade. In turn, there has been a corresponding increase
in Russian trade links with South Korea, which is still
technically at war with North Korea.
Moscow and
Pyongyang have signed a new bilateral treaty to replace
an obsolete Soviet-era accord in place since 1961.
However, bilateral annual trade turnover has been below
US$100 million for the past few years. The decline has
been blamed mainly on North Korea's economic crisis and
its unpaid debts to Russia.
It has been argued
that Russia's failure to join talks on North Korea next
month or in August may well spark a new wave of realism
in Moscow, after the initial enthusiasm prompted by the
world's expectation that Russia could play a major role
in defusing the crisis subsided. After all, Beijing has
greater potential to influence Pyongyang, China having
long ago displaced Russia as North Korea's main trade
partner and interlocutor.
Russia has another
good reason to rethink its proactive approach to North
Korea. The last time Russia tried its hand at
negotiating a strategic agreement with Kim Jong-il, in
2000, it turned into a fiasco. First, it was announced
in Moscow that North Korea had agreed to give up its
ballistic-rocket program in exchange for Russia's
launching of civilian satellites into space. And then it
turned out that it was a joke by Kim. Hence
circumstantial evidence arguably indicates that Russia
does not really have a firm grip on the degree of its
ability to influence North Korea.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
