| |
Japanese hawks soar on Korea
fears
By Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON - North Korea's apparent acquisition
of nuclear weapons and its admission last year that it
had abducted scores of Japanese citizens over the past
two decades have transformed the political outlook of
many Japanese, driving even cautious diplomats to take
positions further to the right of the administration of
US President George W Bush.
That was apparent at
a recent Washington seminar on Korea, where Naoyuki
Agawa, the minister for public affairs and director of
the Japan Information and Culture Center at the Embassy
of Japan, publicly endorsed the concept of "regime
change" in North Korea as "ultimately the solution" for
the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
"Nobody talks about it, but I think it's
obvious," Agawa told the seminar organized by the
Sasakawa Peace Foundation. "The question is how soon. I
don't think anybody's in a hurry to forcibly bring that
to take place, and therefore I think that the status quo
will continue."
To be sure, Agawa, who is a
member of a US-Japan Strategic Study Group, was speaking
for himself and not the Japanese government. But his
open call for an overthrow of the Kim Jong-il regime in
Pyongyang show how deeply North Korea's recent behavior
has touched Japan's political psyche.
According
to Agawa, Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, along
with and other political parties, began to change their
attitude toward North Korea after it tested a ballistic
missile over Japan three years ago and admitted to the
kidnapping charges during Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi's historic visit to Pyongyang last year.
"For the first time in 50 years, Japan has the
fear of a clear and present danger," he said. Many
ordinary citizens now realize "that one of their loved
ones could be abducted from the coast".
He
pointed out that Takako Doi of Japan's Socialist Party,
a historical ally of North Korea, recently lost her bid
for re-election as party chair because she was
identified with a faction that had denied the abductions
for many years.
To some observers, Agawa's
comments illustrate an alarming lurch toward militarism
in Japan and show how quickly Japan has forgotten its
own legacy in colonial Korea and its role as a US
military supply base during the Korean War.
Agawa's view "reflects the Koizumi's
government's stand, definitely", said John Feffer, a
longtime Korea watcher and the author of North
Korea/South Korea: US Policy at a Time of Crisis
recently published in the United States by Seven Stories
Press. "It's unfortunate there's been such a rise in
anti-North Korean feeling in Japan."
Feffer sees
a strong link between the government's positions on
North Korea and its attempts to change the peace clause
in Japan's constitution to allow Japanese military
forces to participate in overseas conflicts, such as the
US war in Iraq. "The specter of a North Korean attack is
the only thing that can uproot Japan's deeply seeded
pacifism," he said in a separate interview.
Feffer, who has visited both North and South
Korea, believes that calling for regime change in North
Korea is irresponsible because "there are no
alternatives. They have no idea what would replace it"
(the Kim Jong-il regime).
Agawa broached the
idea after Ralph Cossa, a Korea specialist and president
of the Pacific Forum of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Honolulu, provided a generally
upbeat preview of the upcoming six-party talks on ending
the nuclear crisis.
The talks, tentatively scheduled
for December, include the United States, South Korea,
China, Russia, and Japan, all of whom want Pyongyang to
stop making weapons, and North Korea, which is seeking
guarantees of security and economic aid in exchange for
any promise to disarm.
The negotiations have
been complicated by deep splits within the Bush
administration, which is constantly wavering between a
hardline faction centered at the Pentagon - which would
prefer to see the problem disappear through the regime
change sought by Agawa - and a more pragmatic faction at
the State Department, which sees no choice but to
negotiate.
Bush himself, in a recent visit to
Asia, made it clear that he supports the latter course,
which has been doggedly pursued by Secretary of State
Colin Powell. He has been represented at all talks with
North Korea by assistant secretary of state James Kelly,
who was Cossa's predecessor at the Pacific Forum before
taking his present job.
Cossa lamented as "one
of the saddest things in the conduct of US foreign
policy" the fact that when Powell announces something as
policy, skeptics question whether that is official
policy even after Bush endorses it. Instead, many
suspect that when John Bolton, a hardliner in the State
Department who supports the Pentagon position "opens his
mouth, that's when the real George Bush speaks".
"That's the real US credibility problem in
Asia," said Cossa. "There's a feeling that US foreign
policy is in shambles."
Despite that perception,
said Cossa, many officials in both China and Japan, key
participants in the talks, believe that their relations
with the United States have "never been better". With
both countries pressing for an end to North Korea's
nuclear program, Cossa said a multilateral deal with
North Korea is a likely outcome of the talks.
Realistically, "they will be rewarded", he said.
"It's not a question of if, but when." Cossa added that
any such agreement must be fully verified, and, as a
prerequisite, "South Korea must stand firm with North
Korea."
Cossa dismissed liberal critics who say
that Bush's hostile attitude toward Pyongyang, as
evidenced by his 2001 "axis of evil" speech, was a key
factor in the crisis that began a year ago when Kelly
confronted North Korea with evidence it was enriching
uranium.
"The ultimate goal of pursuing nuclear
weapons and the decision to cheat not only on the Agreed
Framework but also on the North-South 1992
denuclearization agreement and also on the International
Atomic Energy Agency and nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty commitments started well before the Bush
administration, and we're still dealing with that," he
said.
Feffer pointed out that key members of the
Bush administration, including Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, were pushing
for regime change in North Korea long before the uranium
revelations, adding that even the Central Intelligence
Agency has no concrete evidence of exactly what that
program looks like.
The harsh rhetoric coming
out of the Pentagon and people such as Agawa in Japan,
Feffer said, is exactly why conservative Republicans in
Congress such as Representative Curt Weldon of
Pennsylvania "want to strike a deal".
Weldon
recently led a small, bipartisan delegation of US
lawmakers to Pyongyang and returned saying he believed a
deal was in sight in which North Korea would end its
nuclear program in exchange for written guarantees of
its security.
(Inter Press Service)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
