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North Korea balks, then agrees to talk.
Why now?
By Tom
Tobback
BEIJING - "Time is not on the American
side," said North Korea's vice foreign minister, Kim
Gye-gwan, to Jack Pritchard, the former United States
negotiator with North Korea, when he visited the
Yongbyon nuclear facilities in North Korea last month.
And, Kim added: "As time passes, our nuclear deterrent
continues to grow in quantity and
quality."
Indeed, time is not on the US side in
this nuclear standoff. However, the Democratic Peoples
Republic of Korea's (DPRK's) recent and rather
surprising announcement that it has agreed to resume the
six-party talks in Beijing on February 25 indicates that
time is not entirely on North Korea's side
either.
North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il agreed
in principle to participate in a second round of
six-party talks when China's Number 2 leader, chairman
of the standing committee of the National People's
Congress Wu Bangguo, visited him in Pyongyang last
October. The DPRK had described the first round of talks
that took place in Beijing last August as a waste of
time.
So to ensure progress in the second round
of talks, which involve North and South Korea, China,
Japan, Russia and the US, Pyongyang demanded - and has
been demanding - agreement on a joint statement before
the talks. This proviso was supported by China after US
President George W Bush stated he was willing to discuss
a written multilateral security guarantee. However, in
December Pyongyang announced additional conditions for
its proposed first step, a re-freeze of the Yongbyon
nuclear facilities that had been under inspection from
1994 to 2002 by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA).
The US accused North Korea of setting
preconditions for the talks, and the six-party process
seemed to have hit a deadlock. Then suddenly last week
the official (North) Korea Central News Agency
announced, "The DPRK and the US, the major parties
concerned to the six-way talks, and China, the host
country, agreed to resume the next round of the six-way
talks from February 25 after having a series of
discussion."
Officials in Seoul said that the
DPRK had not bothered to notify the US or South Korea
before announcing this decision.
Pyongyang
drops precondition, scope limited
Pyongyang has
obviously dropped its demand for a pre-talks joint
statement. At the talks, North Korea will expectedly
elaborate on its known proposal for "simultaneous
actions" and the other parties will then respond. Thus
the scope is minimal, and that is probably why the
duration of the talks has not yet been announced.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov
warned not to expect any breakthrough, given the
disagreement over the proposed joint pre-talks
statement.
North Korea has done its best to
convince the US of its nuclear deterrent by showing the
recent private US delegation reprocessed plutonium at
Yongbyon, and DPRK officials reportedly were
disappointed when US nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker
told them he had seen nothing that convinced him
Pyongyang possesses a nuclear deterrent.
On the
other hand, Pyongyang assured the delegation it does not
have the uranium enrichment program US intelligence
claims to know about. Possibly North Korea wants to
capitalize on doubts about the Bush administration's use
of intelligence. Last week KCNA stated: "Now the Bush
administration finds itself in a tight corner as it
provoked a war against Iraq after deceiving Americans
and the world."
Other recent events might have
also have convinced Pyongyang that a continuing crisis
does not serve its interests. The US-led international
consortium KEDO (Korea Energy Development Organization)
responsible for building the two light-water reactors in
exchange for the freeze of Yongbyon in 1994, halted work
on the project on December 1.
After Libya vowed
to dismantle its secret nuclear program on December 22,
evidence is emerging of a nuclear black market run by
the Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who
admitted last week to having passed nuclear secrets to
various countries - including the DPRK.
Japan
threatens economic sanctions
Other incentives to
North Korea are the desperate state of the country's
population and its economy. The Japanese parliament's
decision last week to allow the government to impose
economic sanctions and halt trade between the two
neighboring countries could hurt the DPRK's economy
severely.
According to the deputy director of the
DPRK Finance Ministry, Yang Chang-yoon, Pyongyang does
need outside assistance and loans to resuscitate its
economy, despite the issuance of state bonds last year.
One of North Korea's first demands is to be removed from
the US list of terrorism-sponsoring nations and to be
allowed to join international financial institutions
such as the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF).
Today the UN World Food Program (WFP)
in Beijing warned that its cereal stocks in North Korea
are all but depleted, with little donations in the
pipeline. "We are scraping the bottom of the barrel,"
Masood Hyder, the WFP's representative in Pyongyang,
told a news conference here. "Over four million core
beneficiaries - the most vulnerable children, women and
elderly people - are now deprived of very vital rations.
It's the middle of the harsh Korean winter and they need
more food, not less."
Some observers argue that
Pyongyang's decision to resume the six-party talks is
the result of external political and economic pressure.
On the other hand, having the talks take place during
the current uproar over the uses of US intelligence
about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction might enable
Pyongyang to keep its alleged uranium-based nuclear
program off the table - at least in this round. However,
if Pyongyang is not prepared to make further major
concessions at the talks, the six-party process is
likely to derail.
After his latest visit to the
DPRK's Yongbyon nuclear facilities, US negotiator Jack
Pritchard brought up a scenario in which this could
exactly be Pyongyang's intention, or at least a
realistic option. Pritchard is concerned that the talks
will fail and that Pyongyang will withdraw from the
diplomatic process. If it then declares it has produced
all the nuclear weapons it needs and does not intend to
make more, China, South Korea, and Russia might accept
this as a status quo, arguing the threat is minimal.
This would dissolve the six-party process, and would
leave the region a lot less secure.
Tom
Tobback is the creator and editor of Pyongyang Square, a website
dedicated to providing independent information on North
Korea. He is based in Beijing.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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