Tilting at windmills: Hill makes
the rounds By Donald Kirk
LONDON - Christopher Hill, the top US
diplomat for Asia, is behaving like Don Quixote
tilting at windmills as he crashes through Asia
moaning plaintively about the need for everyone to
pressure North Korea into not misbehaving.
His remarks, as he navigates from Tokyo to
Beijing and Seoul, suggest either incredible
misunderstanding about what North Korea is up to
or diabolic cleverness as the US opens another
phase in a diplomatic contest that risks turning
into a military
one.
The misunderstanding is all about North
Korea's attitude toward the six-party talks -
and the utility of such talks even if Pyongyang
were to return to the table for another gabfest
whose only beneficiaries so far have been the
diplomats and journalists dining out on expense
accounts in Beijing.
Hill must know North
Korea viewed the statement that all six parties
signed in Beijing nearly a year ago as a wedge
that it could use to try to extract more
concessions. Specifically, as Pyongyang made clear
on September 20, one day after the signing of that
infamous "statement of principles" under which
North Korea ostensibly agreed to give up its
nuclear-weapons program, it insisted on at least
one of those light-water nuclear-energy reactors
promised in the Geneva framework agreement of
1994.
Of course, North Korea, under its
current leadership, is not about to give up its
nuclear-weapons program any more than the United
States, under current management, is going to do
anything about reviving the failed program for
fulfilling North Korea's energy needs. Hill,
as US assistant secretary of state for East Asia
and the Pacific and chief US negotiator at the
suspended six-party talks, has to appreciate their
futility. He surely knows that North Korea, if by
some chance it did return to the table, would
carry on endlessly not only about vast amounts of
aid but also about the US Treasury Department's
action against counterfeiting - an issue that had
not yet arisen a year ago.
So why is Hill
going around yakking about the need for "concrete
action" by various and sundry members of the
international community to twist the arms of the
North Koreans and get them to go for another
get-together in Beijing? What difference would it
make if they did talk? Does Hill think his North
Korean counterpart, Kim Gye-gwan, would skulk off
into a corner with him one-on-one and suddenly
say, yes, we've been too tough, now let's all get
along?
One obvious reason for Hill's
carrying-on with interlocutors around Northeast
Asia has to be that he is stalling for time,
giving the administration of US President George W
Bush some breathing space while prosecuting a
shooting war at the other end of the "axis of
evil" - in Iraq, as Iran supplies arms and funds
to Shi'ite forces there and in southern Lebanon.
But there is much more to Hill's diplomacy
than that. He has a couple of other goals in mind.
For one thing, he would no doubt rather Kim
Jong-il did not press the button on an underground
test of a nuclear warhead. He would like to see
that China applies just the right pressure on Kim
to talk him out of what everyone believes would
foment a major escalation in regional tensions.
The Chinese are supposed to be masters at
dealing with their troublesome protectorate but
have had terrible luck so far. They've been unable
to get North Korea to resume six-party talks, and
they failed in whatever effort they made to
dissuade Kim from test-firing a bunch of missiles
in early July.
Those disappointments,
however, are trivial compared with the ruckus an
underground nuke test would create. Thus China has
been inviting Kim for another trip to Beijing - a
chance to talk over everything, including all
those aid and trade projects that Kim glimpsed
during a trip to Beijing and southeastern China
early this year.
The Chinese, above all,
cannot be seen as exercising "pressure" on Kim to
back down. What is Kim's state philosophy of
juche - self-reliance - if not a rationale
for defying whatever some other meddling foreigner
wants to persuade him to do or not to do?
The interaction here is so complex and
subtle that it's not even certain whether Kim is
going to Beijing at all. First, reports from Seoul
said he was there, then the Chinese denied it.
Next, we heard that North Korea has blocked
traffic to Sinuiju, the border city across the
Yalu River from Dandong, the major point of entry
into China, and a South Korean official spread the
word that the Chinese had indeed invited him.
Believe it when you see it.
But Hill has a
tougher game to play than just leaning on the
Chinese to lean on Kim. He's also trying to sell
the Chinese - and Japanese and South Koreans - on
the virtues of a hardline interpretation of the
United Nations Security Council resolution barring
any dealings with North Korea that might aid and
abet its arms trade.
Yes, all parties,
China, Russia and South Korea as well as Japan,
which wanted a much more stringent resolution,
subscribed to that resolution, which North Korea
roundly denounced and defied the next day. Now the
devil is in the details of how to interpret it.
Hill is telling diplomats in the region of
the need for a hardline interpretation. Taken in
its most literal sense, the interpretation might
be seen as banning any and all financial dealings
with North Korea, since the money can be used to
support the country's arms industry, including
manufacture, research and development of nuclear
warheads.
The resolution could also be
used to try to block all trade in a wide range of
other products, including raw materials from North
Korea, ranging from tungsten to gold to zinc, as
well as just about anything that might be used in
any kind of machinery.
Thus the United
States, through Hill, would like to tighten the
screws on North Korea, hitting it at its weakest
point. It was, after all, the US Treasury
Department's order forbidding banks and other
institutions dealing with North Korea from dealing
with US institutions that gave Pyongyang the
pretext for staying away from another round of
six-party talks.
That ban in effect drove
Pyongyang away from Macau, where North Korean
agents had been passing counterfeit US$100 bills
through Banco Delta Asia for years. Now North
Korea is casting about for other banks through
which to carry on such dealings, and reportedly
has found some likely partners in Russia.
This kind of pressure, as all sides are
well aware, will only deepen the sense of
incipient crisis without bringing North Korea
closer to the negotiating table. The Japanese may
be all for tightening the screws, but Hill isn't
likely to find serious support in Beijing or
Seoul.
In fact, South Korea's foreign
minister, Ban Ki-moon, has been warning of a
possible highly adverse reaction in the North,
raising the specter of the familiar Korean image
of a "rat caught in a corner". The fear is that
Kim Jong-il may decide, under such pressure, to go
ahead with his nuclear test and see how the rest
of the world reacts.
He does, however,
have some other cards to play first. Latest word
is that he's readying for another series of
missile firings. They won't create such a
hullabaloo, since everyone knows North Korea has
missiles, and the short-range Scuds and mid-range
Rodongs have been on the market for years in
dealings with North African and Middle Eastern
countries ranging from Libya to Syria to Yemen to
Iran.
All that would really change the
equation, as far as missiles are concerned, would
be a successful test-firing of the Taepodong 2,
which fizzled soon after its launch on July 5, but
it's believed another Taepodong 2 has been removed
from its launch site, and it may be a while before
North Korean engineers and scientists are ready to
test it again.
Another volley of Scuds and
Rodongs, however, would be a fine way to usher in
next week's summit at which President Bush again
hosts South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in
Washington. Roh, while paying lip service to the
US-Korean alliance, is sure to urge forbearance in
dealing with North Korea, just as Ban Ki-moon is
doing as he hosts Christopher Hill in Seoul.
Against this type of pressure, Hill is
likely to return to Washington with little to show
for all the talking other than the usual
expressions of "frustration" and "disappointment"
over North Korea's intransigence. That kind of
result would be preferable, though, to sudden
resolve by all parties to turn the heat on
Pyongyang - a strategy that could backfire in a
crisis that all sides would like to avoid.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been
covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces
in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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