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SPEAKING
FREELY
Diplomacy in the
DPRK
By Tom
Tobback
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have their
say. Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
On the
first anniversary of North Korea's withdrawal from the
Non-Proliferation Treaty (January 10, 2003), there are
few reasons to be optimistic about a solution to the
nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. Pyongyang has
vowed to further build up its military force while
claiming to be in favor of a negotiated peaceful
resolution and, in fact, Washington is doing exactly the
same. As Russia's deputy foreign minister, Alexander
Losyukov, put it two weeks ago, "mistrust and excessive
demands on each other" by the United States and North
Korea are the reasons for the continuing delay of the
second round of six-way talks.
As a sign of
frustration, South Korean foreign minister Yoon
Young-kwan - before he had to resign last week -
admitted he was hoping the talks could be held in the
first half of this year. South Korea, Russia, and Japan
seem to be less and less involved in the preparations
for the talks; the conditions are set in Pyongyang and
Washington, and both think they have Beijing on their
side. Seoul and Tokyo are kept in the loop to foot the
bill if economic assistance is ever going to be
provided, as they did for the Korean Peninsula Energy
Development Organization project, supplying light water
reactors to North Korea. [The North was to give stop
using graphite reactors that can produce plutonium used
in nuclear warheads. The light water reactors project
has been suspended.] Japan and South Korea have paid a
total of US$1.3 billion, or 70 percent of the total,
while the US with only 21 percent seems to be firmly in
charge of the consortium.
After the US hinted it
was willing to provide security assurances, North Korea
specified its additional demands in exchange for
refreezing the Yongbyon plutonium facilities. In fact
these demands are similar to what Pyongyang should have
gotten out of the Agreed Framework of 1994: remove the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) from the US
list of sponsors of terrorism; lift political, economic
and military sanctions against the country and supply
heavy oil and other energy resources to the DPRK.
The US will not accept a mere freeze of
Yongbyon; it is prepared to provide security assurances,
but only in return for a DPRK promise to dismantle all
of its nuclear facilities, irreversibly, because as US
Secretary of State Colin Powell says, "We do not want to
see this movie again."
Over the last few weeks,
there has been intensive diplomacy to come to an
agreement on the scope of the first step to be taken by
both sides. The DPRK has been demanding such a pre-talks
agreement because it does not want to participate in a
useless talking session, like the first round of
six-party talks back in August. As it looks extremely
unlikely that the US will offer any economic assistance
or improved political relations in addition to a
security guarantee in this first phase, the talks will
not easily materialize.
Another issue that will
inevitably complicate negotiations is the alleged DPRK
uranium enrichment program, which was in fact the
trigger of the current crisis. The US will of course
want to include this program in a DPRK promise to end
its nuclear activities, but some weeks ago it became
clear that even China is not convinced the DPRK actually
has such a uranium program. Chinese officials reportedly
said the US government briefing provided to them, after
the return of a US delegation from North Korea, had not
been sufficient to convince Beijing that the DPRK had
such a program. In the current climate, no country will
indeed easily accept US intelligence on the existence of
WMD facilities in an axis-of-evil member country.
Referring to Libya, the DPRK Foreign Ministry
issued a statement saying the US should not expect
Pyongyang to follow the example and renounce its
weapons. The Workers' Party newspaper recently argued
Iraq made a big mistake accepting the weapons
inspections and not preparing for war. How an
international inspection mechanism beyond the Yongbyon
facilities will ever work in the DPRK remains a key
question. Indeed as UN inspector Hans Blix noticed, it
is hard to prove that something does not exist. If the
US insists on nationwide inspections while the DPRK
continues to deny having a uranium program, negotiations
will get stuck, and the Kim dynasty will remain in
war-mode as it has been since it established the DPRK 55
years ago. In that case the imperialist threat might
well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Tom Tobback is the creator
and editor of Pyongyang Square, a website
dedicated to providing independent information on North
Korea.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click here if you
are interested in contributing.
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