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PYONGYANG
WATCH
From bonhomie to bombshell: goodbye,
goodwill
By Aidan Foster-Carter
I had plans for last Thursday. Or rather, I had
no plans. It was meant to be a day off. I was in
Brussels, invited to speak at a seminar on EU-North
Korea relations held two days earlier at the European
Parliament. North Korea sent a five-strong delegation of
diplomats, headed by Choe Su-hon, one of the longest
serving (since 1986) of Pyongyang's nine deputy foreign
ministers. A rare close encounter, for me.
And
very jolly it was, too. The meeting as such was off the
record. But it's no secret that ties between North Korea
and western Europe have blossomed in the past three
years. Of 15 EU member states, only two - France and
Ireland - don't yet have full diplomatic relations with
North Korea. The EU is a big aid donor: 274 million
euros, and counting. Politically, Europe's belief in
engaging Pyongyang has been an explicit counterweight to
the US hard line of the past 20 months, since Bush took
over from Clinton. Not that we pulled our punches.
Readers of this column won't be surprised to hear that I
had one or two things to tell the comrades, and I wasn't
alone. (Tone is important: I can do respectful too,
believe it or not.) While welcoming bold if belated
steps like economic reform and confessing to abductions,
we all urged faster and firmer progress: not least,
prompt compliance to give the International Atomic
Energy Agency a full nuclear history and accounting as
required under the 1994 Agreed Framework .
The
North Koreans heard us out. There were no shouting
matches, unlike some I've known. For their part, they
stressed that their commitment to outreach and reform,
including nuclear inspections in due course, was
irreversible. And they sounded as if they meant it. The
bonhomie continued outside the formal sessions, over
lunch and dinner. At an evaluation meeting next day with
one of the sponsors, we all agreed it had gone well.
North Korea was coming in from the cold. Dialogue was
delivering results.
Yet as the song says: But
that was yesterday, and yesterday's gone. Late last
Wednesday night, the US dropped its bombshell. So much
for my planned day off as a tourist. Thursday was one
radio and TV interview after another - even, to be
honest, as I was struggling to work out what the hell
was going on.
To some extent broadcasting is
always like that. It's not unusual, if ironic, as a
so-called expert to be asked to comment on an event that
you didn't actually know about till they called. So you
have to think fast, and sound confident. But normally
this breaking news isn't too hard to interpret, in the
light of the background knowledge you already have. It's
fairly clear what has happened, and what may come next.
Not this time. Not last Thursday, nor now, three
days later. How news is constructed is a crucial issue.
Obviously for North Korea to admit to having a covert
nuclear weapons program is a top story: it made
headlines around the world. But hold on. We didn't
actually hear this from Pyongyang - still haven't, at
this writing. We heard it from Washington. But why, and
why now: two weeks late, at dead of night?
As
usual, you can choose between cock-up, conspiracy, or (I
reckon) a mix of both. You can see why the US, having
had its suspicions confirmed, would want to keep it
quiet. With a tough task already to convince a largely
skeptical world of the need to attack Iraq, North Korean
nukes are an unwelcome distraction - and an added
complication as regards policy inconsistency. As many
have commented: if Kim Jong-il already has the nasties
that Saddam still seeks, which one is the clear and
present danger?
Assistant Secretary of State
James Kelley did however brief the South Korean and
Japanese governments (now we know why he cancelled
planned press conferences) who would also have preferred
this under wraps rather than upsetting their own efforts
to engage Pyongyang. Maybe the whole thing would have
stayed secret, to be dealt with by backroom diplomacy
rather than in the full glare of publicity. But
Washington is a leaky place, and this secret was about
to blow - so the State Department got in first. That
revelation nonetheless blindsided and embarrassed Seoul
and Tokyo, on the eve of important talks for each of
them with North Korea.
Equally, Pyongyang can't
have known the story was going to break when it did.
Given how the North Korean system works - a bicycle
wheel with Kim Jong-il as hub, but whose spokes have
little lateral contact - I wonder if the team we met
were fooling us, or simply weren't in the loop
themselves. At all events, last Thursday found them
still in Brussels for what were to have been routine
meetings with the European Commission. The Financial
Times quoted Vice Minister Choe as saying that North
Korea has the right to defend itself "when menaced".
Unimpressed, the EC warned of "serious consequences".
Serious indeed. It's still early days, and we
await Pyongyang's confirmation of this latest confession
- not least so as to clarify, as the Financial Times put
it in an editorial: is this "an act of contrition,
belligerence or blackmail?" More on that and the fuller
ramifications in another article. But for now, yet again
we see how what former British prime minister Harold
Macmillan called "Events, dear boy, events" can totally
transform the political landscape overnight. My last
column (One weekend's news)
forecast "a wild ride" from North Korea - but hell, I
wasn't expecting this. As for our seminar, and all that
goodwill: Gone in an instant.
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