"It's all South Korea's fault!" In a refreshing change
from its natural tendency to blame Washington for all
the world's troubles, Pyongyang has recently announced
that it cannot proceed with the six-party talks on
defusing its its clandestine nuclear-weapons programs since "the
foundation for talks has been destroyed" as a result of
Seoul's secret nuclear experiments.
The United
States, of course, shares the blame, given its "double
standards regarding the nuclear issue", but the primary
blame has now apparently shifted from Washington to
Seoul (conveniently bypassing Pyongyang, where the real
problem continues to lie).
China has regrettably
reinforced this argument by noting that the South's
nuclear experiments have complicated the situation. In
an attempt to get the talks back on track, Beijing has
hinted that South Korea's nuclear transgressions could
be discussed at the next round of talks; an idea that
Seoul promptly (and I believe foolishly) rejected.
Meanwhile, senior officials from all five of North
Korea's interlocutors have called on Pyongyang to agree
to another round of talks, even as many profess to see
little prospect of success prior to the November US
presidential elections. The six parties are North and
South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the US.
Is all hope lost for another round of talks? I
think not, especially if Seoul and Beijing are prepared
to directly refute Pyongyang's foolish assertion
and instead challenge the North to follow Seoul's
example of (admittedly after-the-fact)
transparency. Unfortunately, while South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and
Russian President Vladimir Putin have publicly called on
Pyongyang to resume the talks at their recent Moscow
summit - a call echoed by senior officials from
Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul at their latest Trilateral
Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) dialogue - none
seems willing to press Pyongyang on the issue.
The big differences between South
Korea's admitted transgressions and Pyongyang's
indirectly acknowledged violations of Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regulations is that it was Seoul
itself that revealed its most recent illegal actions - taken
by a small group of scientists without government
sanction, some four years ago - and then it welcomed
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to
investigate not only the 2,000 uranium-enrichment experiments but
its long-canceled 1982 government-sponsored
plutonium-based weapons program as well - a clandestine
effort halted under US pressure, one should add.
Seoul has been disappointingly quiet in the face
of the North's allegations - as it regrettably normally
is - merely dismissing the charges and calling on the
North to resume negotiations. A more appropriate
approach would be to challenge Pyongyang to follow
Seoul's example and invite the IAEA to investigate both
sides' alleged transgressions, perhaps with
representatives from both North and South accompanying
each inspection effort.
North Korean officials
reportedly told visiting British Foreign Office Minister
Bill Rammell that it could "never sit at the table to
negotiate its nuclear weapon program unless truth about
the secret nuclear experiments in South Korea is fully
probed". Seoul should respond to this demand by offering
to present a full briefing on its clandestine programs
at the next round of talks, inviting a representative
from the IAEA to come and share its findings as well.
Seoul should then challenge Pyongyang to do the same.
Seoul's embarrassing revelations can provide a
way out of the crisis for North Korea if it so chooses.
If renegade scientists can be blamed for Seoul's
transgressions, certainly they can be discovered (or
manufactured) in the North. Diplomatic niceties (and a
desire by all sides to move forward) would result in
acceptance of almost any North Korean excuse if the end
result was full disclosure by Pyongyang of its uranium-
and plutonium-based programs.
If Seoul
is prepared to lay its nuclear card on the
table for all to see, then the next step is getting
Pyongyang to the table to see them. Here again, some new
thinking is needed to end the current game in which
Pyongyang continues to hold out before each round until
receiving sufficient "incentives" merely for attending.
(Beijing reportedly has had to offer significant amounts
of economic and energy assistance to get the North to
previous meetings, including in one instance an
agreement to build a glass manufacturing factory in
honor of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il's birthday.)
President Roh should seize the initiative. He
should ask Beijing to arrange another round of six-party
talks for early October to allow Seoul to explain fully
to the other participants the nature and extent of its
past nuclear programs and the steps it is taking,
including full cooperation with the IAEA, in order to
ensure that they are verifiably ended. Beijing should
then set a date for this meeting and invite all the
other parties to participate, making it clear that the
meeting will proceed as scheduled, even if not all
participants choose to attend. This would put the
pressure on Pyongyang to attend, rather than putting the
pressure on Beijing to bribe it into to make another
appearance.
North Korea's attempt to blame
Seoul for the lack of progress in the six-party process is
disingenuous and insulting. It's time to call
Pyongyang's bluff.
Ralph A Cossa is president of
thePacific Forum CSISa Honolulu-based non-profit research institute
affiliated with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington. He can be reached
atRACPacForum@cs.com.
